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A MAN'S REACH 

OR 

SOME CHARACTER IDEALS 



A man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what's a heaven for? 

— Brovming 



BY 

CHARLES EDWARD LOCKE 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



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Copyright, 1914, by 
CHARLES EDWARD LOCKE 



MAY 29 1914 



©CU374261 



TO THE MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF THE 
FIRST METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF 
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, AMONG WHOM 
I AM SPENDING SOME OF THE HAPPIEST 
YEARS OF MY HUMBLE MINISTRY, THIS 
VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS 

chapter page 

Foreword 9 

I. Ideals and What They Cost 11 

II. What Is Man? 29 

III. Heroism in Everyday Life 45 

IV. The Human Hand 57 

V. A Cheerful Countenance 71 

VI. The Cure of Doubt 89 

VII. Money 103 

VIII. Every Man a Penny 129 

IX. What is Life? 147 

X. Self- Mastery 159 

XI. Sympathy 177 

XII. Reverence 191 

XIII. Appreciation 205 

XIV. The Gospel of Rest and Health 219 

XV. The Burning Bush 233 

XVI. Getting Along with Folks 251 

XVII. "Master. Say On" 263 



FOREWORD 

This is not an ambitious volume, but is a 
modest contribution to a subject upon which 
much has been written. From the days when 
the Father of the Faithful went forth from 
Chaldea, ''not knowing whither he went," down 
to the eloquent Roman orator who said, ''Ideals 
are overtures of immortality," and on to Maz- 
zini, who taught the young men of Italy to "love 
and venerate ideals, because ideals are the word 
of God," earnest men have been in pursuit of their 
ideals — the realization of their fondest dreams. 
Such men have momentum and destination. It 
is the achievement of the impossible which makes 
the human race possible. This book has no par- 
ticular message except to those who believe that 
"the good is the enemy of the best." While each 
chapter is independent, yet these discussions are 
arranged in a natural sequence which makes eacji 
a part of all the others. 

The author defines character as the fine art of 
giving up, and this ideal will be found running 
like a motif in music throughout these studies. 
Because in so many ways these pages fall short 
of the author's highest ideals he craves the in- 
dulgence of the amiable reader. 

Los Angeles, California, March, 1914. 
9 



I 

IDEALS AND WHAT THEY COST 



11 



A man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or, what's a heaven for? 

— Robert Browning- 

The situation that has not its duty, its ideals, was never yet 
occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, 
despicable actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or no- 
where is thy ideal; work it out therefrom, and working, believe, 
live, be free. The ideal is thyself. — Thomas Carlyle. 

He is a small man who can realize his ideal. — Chancellor J. R. 
Day. 



12 



CHAPTER I 
IDEALS AND WHAT THEY COST 

A MAN^s life will not be any higher or deeper 
or nobler than the standards he has lifted and the 
principles he has idealized. 

In his masterful picture the artist Hofmann 
has given to us a representation of the rich young 
ruler who came to Jesus earnestly inquiring, 
"Good master, what good thing shall I do that I 
may inherit eternal hfe?" Jesus suggested to him 
that he should keep the Ten Commandments. 
Thereupon, with the zeal of true sincerity, the 
young man declared, "All these things have I 
kept from my youth up; what lack I yet?'' There 
is no Pharisaical egotism in this statement, but it 
bears the marks of the honesty of endeavor; and 
our Lord so fully appreciated the integrity of the 
young man that, Mark says, "And Jesus behold- 
ing him, loved him." His character was attrac- 
tive because it was adorned with Hebraic ideals, 
and the young man was probably as good an 
illustration as could be found of what the religion 
of the consistent Jew could accomplish for the 
individual. 

The inimitable artist reproduces this interview 
at the instant of our Lord's reply, when, grace- 
fully pointing to a half-clothed beggar at the 

13 



14 A MAN^S REACH 

wayside, he says to his visitor, ''If thou wilt be 
perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the 
poor, and come and follow me." Of course, the 
central and awe-inspiring feature of this master- 
piece is our incomparable Lord himself — the im- 
possible study and the despair of all artists, for 
Jesus Christ cannot be painted. The powerful 
contrast, however, is between two men, each 
born with equal rights — one bedecked with royal 
purple and fine linen, with the hems of his gar- 
ments embroidered with jewels rare; the other 
with his bare shoulders exposed by relentless 
poverty, and his wan face and lean hands appeal- 
ing for food, mercy and friends. 

When Jesus said, ''Go, and sell, and give to the 
poor, and come and follow me," he revealed to 
the young man the Christian ideal of self-denial 
and living. Jesus did not enjoin Edenic, or 
angelic, or absolute perfection, but a perfection of 
principle, of purpose, of pattern, and of vision. 
Christian idealism is the Christ realized, the 
spiritual materialized in human character. It is 
the vision of the Transfiguration Mountain 
crystallized into a ministry of sympathy to the 
swarming multitudes at the base of Hermon. 

Ideals are revelations of God. In painting and 
poetry, in sculpture and in music, by as much as 
the masterpiece reaches the ideal by so much is it 
a revelation of God. Hence in Raphael's '^Sistine 
Madonna" and Milton's "Paradise Lost" and 
Angelo's "David" and Handel's "Messiah" God 



IDEALS AND WHAT THEY COST 15 

is speaking another word to his people. Ideal 
character is God's divinest revelation; and it is 
in the field of goodness that any man is justified 
in ambitious yearnings to reach the highest 
standards. He who approaches an ideal ap- 
proaches God. He who achieves an ideal be- 
comes a high priest of the Perfect One. 

It used to be said of Lord Chatham, 'There is 
something finer in the man than anything he has 
ever said.'' Yes, there is an unexpressed and 
inexpressible residue of the soul. It is the effort 
to apprehend and translate into the terms of 
life what the soul feels which enjoys rapturous 
interviews beyond Sinai's veil. 

Dwells within the soul of every artist 
More than all his efforts can express. 

No great thinker ever Uved and taught you 
All the wonder that his soul received. 

No true painter ever set on canvas 
All the glorious vision he conceived. 

No musician — 

But be sure he heard and strove to render 

Feeble echoes of celestial strains. 

No real poet ever wove in numbers 
All his dream. 

Art and love speak, but their words must be 
Like sighings of illimitable forests. 

There are notes of music beyond those recorded 
by the infinitesimal filaments of the auditory 
nerve. The fourth dimension of space is an in- 



16 A MAN'S REACH 

tuitive reach of the mathematical mind for some- 
thing beyond. The most thriUing messages we 
give to men are the truths we feel but cannot 
tell. Man's reach is far beyond his grasp, but in 
endeavoring to achieve an ideal we grasp some 
things which would otherwise be far and forever 
beyond our reach. Wordsworth describes in ^The 
Excursion" a playful child holding a "smooth- 
lipped" sea-shell to his ear: 

Even such a shell the universe itself 

Is to the ear of faith; and there are times, 

I doubt not, when to you it doth impart 

Authentic tidings of invisible things; 

Of ebb and flow, and ever Enduring Power, 

And central peace subsisting at the heart 

Of endless agitation. 

The real man is invisible, and his best associa- 
tions must be with the things of the spiritual 
world. The true man is taller than his height, 
broader than his shoulders, handsomer than his 
profile, stronger than his right arm. His physical 
being is merely the point at which his nobler self 
as an inverted pyramid touches the earth — his 
real self expands toward the Infinite. Ideals are 
not only, as Cicero said, overtures of immor- 
tality, but they are overtures of life. 

There is an Old Testament and a New Testa- 
ment, but ideal character is God writing his Last 
Testament. The divinest privilege is that a holy 
man or woman may have a place in the volume 
of God's latest revelation to mankind. Lowell 



IDEALS AND WHAT THEY COST 17 

perhaps had this thought in his heart when he 
sang: 

God is not dumb, that he should speak no more! 

If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 
And find'st not Sinai — 'tis thy soul is poor; 

There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less, 
Which whoso seeks shall find — but he who bends 
Intent on Manna still and mortal ends, 
Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore. 

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, 

And not on paper leaves or leaves of stone; 
Each age, each kindred adds a verse to it, 
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. 

While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, 
While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud, 
Still at the prophet's feet the nations sit. 

Ideal character must be our loftiest goal. In 
Edward Everett's great oration on Washington he 
said: ^'A great character founded upon the Uving 
rock of principle is, in fact, not a solitary phe- 
nomenon to be at once perceived, limited, and 
described. It is a dispensation of Providence 
designed to have not merely an immediate but 
a continuous, progressive, and never-ending 
agency. It survives the man who possesses it; 
survives his age; perhaps his country, his 
language." 

^'Character is higher than intellect." Charac- 
ter is greater than ability; character is achieve- 
ment — it is a foregleam of immortality. That 
men who forsake their ideals lose their character 
may be read in the tragic records of the lamentable 
moral lapses of Solomon, Saul, Samson, Judas, 



18 A MAN'S REACH 

Aaron Burr, Benedict Arnold, Charles Parnell, and 
Napoleon. Men and women endeavoring to ful- 
fill their ideals are making civilization — the 
John the Baptists, wiUing to decrease; the Pauls 
and Polycarps, obeying to their death their heav- 
enly visions; the Savonarolas, Wesleys, and 
Knoxes, following their divine guidance until they 
become the pivots upon which epochs are turned. 
Put a man with a fact in his soul anywhere and he 
will soon gather a constituency. If he is incar- 
cerated for preaching the gospel in the street he 
will write his convictions into a Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress in a prison cell. 

The lamented Pasteur said: "Happy is he who 
has a god in his heart; an ideal of beauty, art, the 
gospel virtues; these are the living sources of 
great actions. I cannot give up my work; I am 
within sight of the end. I feel the approach of 
discovery. Come what may, . I have done my 
duty.'' If we would know what men and women 
can do for humanity, who have a god in their 
souls, we should linger for ecstatic hours upon 
the romantic achievements of Saint Francis, John 
Huss, John Ball, John Chrysostom, John Brown, 
William Taylor, William Booth, and George Wil- 
liams; of Susanna Wesley and Frances Willard. 

Riches are not the pivots upon which epochs 
turn, but idealized principles, such as home, and 
honesty, and purity, and service, and sympathy, 
and faith, and hope. Pivots turn not on money, 
but on man. Angelo, disappointed because, after 



IDEALS AND WHAT THEY COST 19 

months of loving devotion to produce his ideal in 
the marble, there sat before him a dumb figure, 
hiu-ls his mallet upon it with the shriek, ^'Why 
don't you speak to me?'' Man is God's master- 
piece. A masterpiece is a work in which the 
artist has invested the most of himself. God's 
investment of himself in man is man's chance for 
achievement and divinity. Alas, when man is 
content to sit a mass of lifeless clay, dumb in the 
presence of Him who waits for his praises and his 
petitions, his sincerest love, and his helpless cry. 
Man's opportunity hes in the fact that God has 
given to man a field of endeavor. God can and 
does do many things without man's help, but 

Not God himself can make man's best 

Without best men to help him. . . . 

. . . 'Tis God gives skill, 

But not without man's hand. He cannot make 

Antonio Stradivarius's violins 

W^ithout Antonio. 

Man's chance lies in following his divine ideals. 
^'\^Tiatsoever things are true, whatsoever things 
are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatso- 
ever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report — if there be 
any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these 
things." 

^^Think on these things!" Only those who fol- 
low glistening stars will find the Messiah's manger. 
''Too low they build who build beneath the stars." 
One of the most elaborate and exquisite memorials 



20 A MAN'S REACH 

in the world has been erected in honor of Sir 
Walter Scott in Edinburgh. It is said that the 
designer was so disappointed with his work that 
he took his own life. What must have been his 
ideal, if such a masterful achievement fell so far 
below it? It is said that Adam Smith died re- 
gretting that he had done so little; but even 
to-day his work entitled the Wealth of Nations, 
issued so far away as 1776, is still considered the 
greatest treatise on political economy. 

Brother in hope, if you 

Should ever pierce our Empyrean through 

And find that perfect star 
Whose beams we have not seen, yet know they are, 

Say that I loved it, too. 
But could not climb so far. 

Truly, he is a small man who can be satisfied 
with his work, who can realize his ideal. The 
rich young ruler was satisfied with his achieve- 
ments and "went away sorrowful. '^ 

I do not deem that it matters not, 

How you live your life below; 
It matters much to the heedless crowd 

That you see go to and fro; 
For all that is noble and high and good 

Has an influence on the rest; 
And the world is better for every one 

Who is living at his best ! 

'^Go and see Lincoln, '^ said an ambitious lawyer 
to a client who had an undesirable case. "I do 
not dare to take your case; it would hurt me in 
politics; but you go to Lincoln; he is not afraid 



IDEALS AND WHAT THEY COST 21 

of any unpopular case." That was an opinion of 
a professional rival. Lincoln was never afraid of 
any case except a dishonest one. That was Abra- 
ham Lincoln's ideal. 

He has not wrought in vain who is working up 
to his highest ideals, notwithstanding his limita- 
tions or environment. There is a legend of a 
humble woman whose duty it was to sweep out 
the stately cathedral, and she longed to serve at 
the altars and do some noble work for Christ. 
One day Jesus appeared to her and said, 
"Daughter, thou sweepest well my floor." 

But such ideals cost, and only those who pay 
the price can attain. They cost struggle, and 
sacrifice, and service, and abstinence, and self- 
denial, and sometimes even life itself. Napoleon 
would not pay the price, and Byron wrote: 

To think that God's fair world hath been 
The footstool of a thing so mean. . . . 
But who would soar the solar height 
To set in such a starless night? 

Calvary's terrific tragedy had certain diabolical 
touches, as when His vile persecutors "passed by, 
wagging their heads," or as they cast lots for His 
seamless coat, or as when, "sitting down, they 
watched him there"; but the climax of refined 
cruelty was presumed to be reached when sarcastic 
high priests, with robes of hypocrisy and hearts of 
hell, vindictively hurled their poisonous venom 
upon Him by saying: "He saved others; himself 
he cannot save." Fiends incarnate, thank you 



22 A MAN'S REACH 

for your word. Even devils can unintentionally 
tell the truth. Yes, he did save ''others" ; ''others" 
— a whole world of "others"; and it was true that 
he could not save himself. If he had saved him- 
self, he could not have saved others. He came 
to be the world's Savioiu- — that was his sublime 
ideal. The cost was that he would spend himself 
— thank God! Jesus was willing to pay the 
price. 

There is a law of service, of sacrifice and sal- 
vage. Those who save others cannot save them- 
selves. Those who would gain a character must 
give. Character is the fine art of giving up. If 
we would get, we must give. It is hard to get, 
harder to give, and hardest to give up; but 
to the hero in search of his ideal, it may be hard 
to get, but it is easier to give, and easiest to 
give up. 

Edward Spencer saved a score of lives far back 
in his school days at Evanston, when he went to 
the imperiled passengers of the wrecked and sink- 
ing Lady Elgin, but he lost his health, and for a 
whole generation he has lived in southern Cali- 
fornia in invalidism and infirmity. As he was 
coming back to consciousness, after days of al- 
most fatal illness, he said to his anxious brother, 
"Will, did I do my best? did I do my best?" 
Yes, he did his best, and in so doing "he saved 
others," but he lost himself. A plain street- 
preacher once said, "I have never been to college, 
but I have been to Calvary." 



IDEALS AND WHAT THEY COST 23 

Didn't know Flynn, Flynn of Virginia? 

Long as he's been yar? 
Lookee here, stranger, Where hev you been? 
Here in this tunnel, He was my partner, 

That same Tom Flynn, 
Working together in wind and weather, 

Day out and in. 

Thar in that drift, back to the wall, 
He held the timbers ready to fall, 
Thar in the darkness I heard him call: 

''Run for your life, Jake; 

Run for your wife's sake. 
Don't wait for me!" And that was all 

Heard in the din. 

Heard of Tom Flynn, Flynn of Virginia. 

That's all about Flynn of Virginia, 
That lets me out, here in the damp 
Out of the sun, that 'ar derned lamp 

Makes my eyes run, 

Well, then — I'm done. 

But, sir, when you'll hear the next fool 
Askin' of Flynn, Flynn of Virginia, 
Just you chip in; say you knew Flynn, 
Say that you been thar. 



Thus does our own Bret Harte in homely 
measure tearfully emphasize the scripture, ^'Go 
sell all thou hast." Tom Flynn, Flynn of Vir- 
ginia, could save others, but he lost himself. We 
may theoretically accept highest ideals, but if we 
do not pay the price, they will not be really in- 
corporated into our lives. William McKinley is 
enshrined forever in the love and memory of a 
grateful nation. He was our ideal American, with 



24 A MAN'S REACH 

chivalrous devotion the knightly defender of the 
home, the church, and the nation. Some months 
ago a cousin of the late President was sentenced 
to thirty days in jail for a misdemeanor. As he 
was led away from the prisoner's dock by an 
officer he broke down and cried: '^My God! why 
did I do it? I have shamed the name of the 
great McKinley." Poor fellow, he knew the way, 
he was acquainted with the best ideals, but he 
would not pay the price. 

No man can get out of his life what was not 
deposited there by inheritance, environment, cul- 
ture, or grace. It is what one gives out that 
develops his character. Christ is the best. After 
Romanes had tried all phases of unbelief he re- 
turned to God's altars, saying, ''It is Christianity 
or nothing." A brave French soldier was wounded 
in the breast. As the surgeon with his knife 
sought to find the bullet the suffering man said, 
'Trobe a little deeper. Doctor, and you will find 
Napoleon." Only those who can truly love are 
able to appreciate truest love. ''Himself he can- 
not save." That is the price of saving others. 
Whoever loses his life for humanity's sake shall 
find it. The price is large, but the prize is greater. 
Pay the price! get the prize! 

"Make me a statue," said the King, 
"Of marble white as snow; 
It must be' pure enough to stand 
Before the throne at my right hand; 
The niche is waiting. Go!" 



IDEALS AND WHAT THEY COST 25 

The sculptor heard the King's command, 

And went upon his way; 
He had no marble; but he went 
With willing mind and high intent 

To mold his thought in clay. 

Day after day he WTOUght the clay, 

But knew not what he wrought; 
He sought the help of heart and brain, 
But could not make the riddle plain — 

It lay beyond his thought. 

To-day the statue seemed to grow, 

To-morrow it stood still; 
The third day all went well again; 
Thus, year by year, in joy and pain. 

He served his Master's will. 

At last his lifelong work was done; 

It was a fateful day; 
He took his statue to the King, 
And trembled like a guilty thing, 

Because it was but clay. 

"Where is my statue?" asked the King. 

"Here, Lord," the sculptor said. 
"But I commanded marble!" "True, 
I had not that — what could I do 

But mold in clay instead?" 

"Thou shalt not unrewarded go. 

Since thou hast done thy best; 
The statue shall acceptance win. 
It shall be as it should have been, 

For I will do the rest." 

He touched the statue, and it changed; 

The clay faUs off, and, lo! 
A marble shape before him stands. 
The perfect work of heavenly hands, 

An angel pure as snow. 



26 A MAN'S REACH 

If you have not marble, work in clay. If you 
have not riches, work in poverty. If you have 
not influence, work in obscurity. If you have not 
been to college, go to Calvary and Olivet. Be 
sure to go to Calvary. Self is not worth keeping. 
Give it away to Christ and humanity. 

A rustic placed an eagle's egg under a sitting 
goose. By and by a young eagle strutted about 
the barnyard with the other fowls, supposing it 
was created for filth and confusion. But one 
day a great eagle came down and touched the 
young bird. It began to rise; the older bird flew 
beneath it and rested it on its strong pinion. Em- 
boldened, the inexperienced bird rose higher, and 
higher still, until it too could poise itself in the 
highest heaven, and build its nest among the 
crags. So the touch of Truth awakens inborn 
royalty. We respond: we leave the levels low 
and follow Truth to pinnacles lofty; and the 
children of a King may come to their own, wear- 
ing crowns of power and wielding scepters of love 
and light. 

In a humble Scotch home, as a boy stood be- 
side his dying mother, she asked him if God 
should call him to the ministry if he would ac- 
cept it. The broken-hearted boy promised his 
mother he would not refuse. Five years passed 
away, during which time the boy had completed 
his preparation for the ministry. He had sadly 
drifted away from the sacred ideals held by his 
sainted mother. He thought he was ready to 



IDEALS AND WHAT THEY COST 27 

abandon most of the fundamental doctrines of 
the old-fashioned religion in which he had been 
faithfully reared, and was doubtful about the 
Scriptures, and was regarding Christ as a good 
man rather than a Divine Redeemer. It was 
Friday night, and the next Sunday he was to 
preach his first sermon in his own church. For 
many weeks he had been in preparation for this 
great event. He sat in front of the fire glancing 
over the pages of his manuscript, and contem- 
plating with pride the result of months of faithful 
deliberation. This first sermon was to contain a 
resume and comprehensive statement of his new 
and sensational theology. 

As he sat and mused, his sainted mother seemed 
to be near. His affection for his guarding angel 
had tenderly increased during the hurrying years 
— and tears came out upon his cheek, and there 
was a sob in his heart as he longed to have her 
present for his first sermon. Then, again, he 
feared that she would be shocked and grieved with 
the change which had come over his doctrinal 
faith, and especially when he would speak his 
conclusions concerning Jesus. In his deepest soul, 
for the first time in many months, he began to 
wonder whether he had not been mistaken when 
he had taken the crown of divinity from the 
Person of his Lord. He fell to his knees and 
prayed for light and leading. As he prayed he 
seemed to hear his mother speak to him once 
more as she did in her parting words to him, 



28 A MAN'S REACH 

saying: "An' the first day ye preach in yer ain 
kirk, speak a gude word for Jesus Christ. An', 
John, I'll hear ye that day, though ye'U no see 
me, an' I'll be satisfied." And John arose from 
his knees and placed the sermon manuscript in 
the fire and watched it until it was consumed. 

He spent the next day in the preparation of a 
new sermon, the subject of which was Jesus 
Christ. Sunday morning, when he preached with 
fervent liberty and tender ministry to the village 
people, most of whom had known him from his 
childhood, and who loved and revered the mem- 
ory of his sainted mother, Ian Maclaren says: 
"The women were weeping quietly, and the rugged 
faces of the men were subdued and softened, as 
when the evening sun plays on the granite stone." 
John did, indeed, "speak a gude word for Jesus," 
and he called it "his mother's sermon." 



II 

WHAT IS MAN? 



29 



A man's a man for a' that. — Robert Burns. 

The precious porcelain of human clay. — Lord Byron. 

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; 
Still by himself abused and disabused; 
Created half to rise and half to fall; 
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; 
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; 
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world. 

— Alexander Pope. 



30 



CHAPTER II 
WHAT IS MAN? 

Astronomy is the oldest of the sciences. In 
the earher times it was closely related to astrol- 
ogy, and the science of the one was often mingled 
with the superstition of the other. Astronomy 
may have had its birth in Chaldea, India, or 
Egypt. Thales, Pythagoras, and Ptolemy lead 
in an illustrious procession in which may be 
found such celebrated names as Copernicus and 
Kepler; Galileo, who first explored the heavens 
with a telescope; Newton; and Tycho Brahe, the 
distinguished Dane. 

The means by which men have been able to 
read the hieroglyphics of the skies are the tele- 
scope, so powerful that the print of our daily 
paper may be read twenty miles away; the micro- 
scope, which will enlarge a hair to the size of a 
lead pencil; the spectroscope, which reveals the 
constituent parts of a luminous body; the law of 
gravity, by which men are able to compute the 
relations of one body to another; and the cal- 
culus, by which the mathematician can exactly 
calculate the distance, density, and velocity of 
heavenly bodies. These have proven an Open 
Sesame which has compelled the caverns of the 
firmament to imlock their fabulous splendors. 

31 



32 A MAN'S REACH 

The nebular hypothesis of Kant and Herschel 
has constituted a good working theory, and was 
reenforced by La Place, Leibnitz, and Winchell. 
This theory holds that in the beginning all the 
universe was a nebula, or fire mist, from which 
by gravitation and crystallization all heavenly 
bodies were formed. By the aid of delicate and 
ingenious instruments and intricate mathemat- 
ical methods the marvels of the astronomical 
world are revealed unto us, and in the ecstasy 
of our increased knowledge we sing with the 
warrior king, ^The heavens declare the glory of 
God.'' 

Behold the sky! By the ancients it was thought 
to be an immense crystal shell, held in its place by 
the shining-headed nails which the stars were 
supposed to be. Sweep the heavens with the 
telescope, and space is found to be limitless; and 
beyond our atmosphere, which extends about 
fifty miles, all is dark and cold under the per- 
petual reign of unbroken silence. We have given 
up believing that the earth rested upon a tor- 
toise, which in turn also rested upon the coil of a 
huge snake. All heavenly bodies are suspended 
in space, and the sky is filled with an innumerable 
throng of suns, planets, satellites, comets, fixed 
stars, and nebulae. 

Behold the sun! The center of a mighty sys- 
tem; a self-luminous body, with a diameter of 
885,000 miles. The sun is 800,000 times larger 
than all the planets and satellites which com- 



WHAT IS MAN? 33 

prise the system. And if the great sun were 
hollow, there could be tumbled into it 352,000 
globes like our earth. 

The planets which have been thrown off by the 
sun are distant from their powerful center in 
miles as follows: Mercury, 37,000,000; Venus, 
68,000,000; Earth, 91,000,000; Mars, 145,000,000; 
Jupiter, 495,000,000; Saturn, 900,000,000; Uranus, 
1,800,000,000, and Neptune, 2,800,000,000. In 
diameter Mercury is the smallest, 3,000 miles, 
and Jupiter, the largest, 89,000 miles. Mercury, 
with a velocity of 109,000 miles per hour, makes 
the circuit of the sun in three months, while it 
requires Neptune 164 years to make the journey. 
The earth moves at the speed of 68,000 miles per 
hour; its circumference is 25,000 miles, and its 
one moon is distant 240,000 miles. Jupiter has 
five moons, perhaps more, according to the Lick 
Observatory astronomers; and Uranus six, while 
Saturn is rich in eight moons and three rings. 
We stop long enough in our bewildering investi- 
gations to shout, ^^The firmament showeth his 
handiwork." 

Behold the fixed stars and the sun systems! No 
fixed star is nearer to the earth than 100,000 times 
190,000,000 miles. Alpha Centauri, the nearest 
fixed star, is 260,000 times the distance of the 
sun. Each of these stars is a sun with its own 
planetary system. Behold the North Star, which 
from most ancient times has guided the mariner 
over the wide seas. It is a sun, perhaps a double 



34 A MAN'S REACH 

sun, which is equal to eighty-six of our suns. If 
there is a man forty-six years of age, let him 
remember, as he looks at the North Star, that the 
ray of light which falls upon his vision has been 
on its way since the day of his birth. Behold the 
Pleiades! Were the light of these stars to be 
extinguished, so far distant are they from us 
that they would continue to shine to us for 700 
years. And the Milky Way, which was once 
thought to be a disused path of the sun, and 
has been called the dust of the spheres, is com- 
posed of 18,000,000 suns, each with its own sys- 
tem of planets. 

And the comets! Once they brought war or 
pestilence; once they were the souls of good men 
on their way to heaven. The comet of 1680 ap- 
pears every 9,000 years, its velocity is 884,000 
miles per hour, and it is distant from the sun 
4,300,000,000 miles; and the comet of 1810, with 
a diameter of 947,000 miles, makes a visit once in 
4,000 years; the train which follows is 132,000,000 
miles in length. It would take an express train 
500,000 years without stopping to cover the dis- 
tance from the sun to the comet of 1880. All of 
these heavenly bodies revolve about a common 
point, Alcyone in the Pleiades, the center of 
motion. It takes our system 20,000,000 years to 
travel around its ellipse. Sirius is eight and 
one half ^^light years" from the earth, Polaris 
seventy, Arcturus four hundred and thirty, and 
Alcyone five hundred; while our sun is only 



WHAT IS MAN? 35 

eight and one half minutes in sending a beam of 
Ught 90,000,000 miles to the earth. 

Tell me, where are there such illustrations of 
the majesty and wisdom and perfection and power 
of the Almighty? Every glistening orb in yonder 
heavens is an eloquent preacher of righteousness: 
''Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto 
night showeth knowledge." Who can remain 
atheistic in the presence of such might and 
mysteriousness? ''The undevout astronomer is 
mad." 

During Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, one 
starry night his savants were discussing the 
question of God, and by elaborate arguments 
reached the unanimous conclusion that there 
was no God. When they referred their arguments 
to Napoleon, sweeping his hand toward the stars, 
he said, "Very ingenious, but who made all 
these?" The prophet Amos says: "Seek him 
that made the seven stars and Orion. The 
Lord is his name." Lord Bacon, in his essay on 
atheism, says, "I had rather believe all the 
fables in the Golden Legend, the Talmud, and 
the Alcoran than that this universal frame is 
without a mind." Sir Isaac Newton, in the 
closing utterances of his Principia, an epoch- 
making book, says: "The admirably beautiful 
structure [universe] could not have originated 
except in the wisdom and sovereignty of an in- 
telligent and powerful Being. He rules all things 
as the Lord of all. The whole divinity of created 



36 A MAN'S REACH 

things in regard to places and times could have 
its origin only in the ideas and will of a neces- 
sarily existing being." 

God is a great Mathematician. Aristotle said, 
'^God geometrizes." Plato placed over the door 
of his school in Athens, ^'Let none but geometri- 
cians enter here." The bees are exact geome- 
tricians. Bowne said, ^^ Crystals are solid 
geometry." Pythagoras, twenty-five hundred 
years ago, said: '^All things are in number. The 
world is a living arithmetic in its development — 
a realized geometry in its repose." In the dia- 
tonic scale there are five tones and two half 
tones, no more and no less primary musical 
sounds. In chemistry certain unvarying parts of 
sodium and of chlorin always make common salt. 
Two parts of hydrogen and one of oxygen always 
result in water. In physics, when water is vapor- 
ized, one cubic foot of water becomes 1,728 cubic 
feet of steam. The proportion never varies. All 
problems of crystallization, heat, diffusion of 
gases, and optics are worked out by aid of alge- 
bra and calculus, logarithms, diagrams and equa- 
tions. All chemical combinations rest upon 
changeless mathematical ratios. All of these 
facts lead a writer to say: ''Man does not create 
these numerical and geometrical problems; he 
discovers them in the warp and woof of things. 
When man has gone so far as he can he is aware 
that there is a vastness of mathematical proc- 
esses and mysteries far beyond his ken." Nature 



WHAT IS MAN? 37 

is the living garment of God. None but knaves 
or fools, or savages, or idiots would deny that 
there is a rational Mind in the universe. No 
wonder the Bible with such startling intensity 
declares, 'The fool hath said in his heart. There 
is no God.'' 

As Dr. W. N. Clarke says, "The assumption of 
a rational order in the universe is one of the 
necessities of thought, and this assumption im- 
plies a rational Mind in the universe." 

There are two mysteries in the universe — God 
and man. Neither is conceivable without the 
other. God predicates man. God is everywhere. 
Man necessitates God. Man is here. Atheism is 
absurd, the abode of fools. 

"The proper study of mankind is man." Yes, 
if he would know God. Plato says, "Trees and 
fields tell me nothing. Men are my teachers." 
But our civilization is better than Plato's be- 
cause God is our teacher as well as man. 

What is man? Every age has its own answer. 
Man is higher or lower according to higher or 
lower ideals attributed to God. When God is 
considered a being of hate, vengeance, or passion, 
then these qualities appear in men to debase 
them. 

The man who has no God has no theory of the 
universe and no workable theory of man. Such 
men write about "The Riddle of the Universe." 
The Bible says God created man to "subdue" 
the earth and to have "dominion over every living 



38 A MAN'S REACH 

thing." Man is the cHmax of all creation — the 
'' Ultima thuleJ^ But materialism has sought to 
ridicule this claim and show that man is out of 
all proportion to the immensity of the universe, 
and that he is monstrously arrogant when he 
thinks he is the loftiest of all God's creations. 

Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, joint worker 
with Darwin in the discovery of the theory of 
natural selection, and probably at the time of his 
death, on November 7, 1913, the greatest living 
scientist in Great Britain, presented the argu- 
ment that ^^the universe is not unlimited. The 
telescope reveals definite boundaries; stars are 
numbered and their habitation known. Our 
earth is the center of the universe. Man is the 
center of this earth. The spiritual development 
of man is a prodigious work, of such importance as 
to be commensurate with the vast universe of 
which man is a part. So great are man's possi- 
bilities that the vast universe was made for his 
habitation and development." 

The Bible says that man is "a little lower than 
God." "A shaving less than God," interprets 
quaint Gesenius, a renowned Hebrew scholar. 
Note the contrast: Buddhism teaches the highest 
perfection to be absorption into God, ultimating 
in nonentity, as a drop of water loses itself in the 
ocean. The Bible teaches: '^Whereby are given 
unto us exceeding great and precious promises, 
that by these ye might be partakers of the divine 
nature" — partners, not parasites; units, not ciphers 



WHAT IS MAN? 39 

or fractions; persons and incarnations of God; 
entity, not extinction; sons and not slaves. 

There is a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough hew them how we will. 

Another poet says : 

Himself from God he could not free; 
He builded better then he knew: 
The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

And Ovid said in the long ago, "Deus est in 
pectore nostro^^ — ^' there is a divinity within om* 
breast." And Seneca wrote, 'The soul hath this 
proof of its divinity, that divine things delight 
it"; and, "O what a vile and abject thing is man 
if he do not raise himself above himianity!" 
Yes, ''There is a divinity that stirs within us." 

Man may be a "partaker of the divine natiu-e." 
Men become like the objects they worship. 
Among the Romans Jupiter was worshiped as a 
god of vengeance, Venus as a goddess of impurity 
in a gorgeous temple, and Mars as a god of war; 
and the Romans were corrupted by their wor- 
ship. A Roman citizen was insulted if he were 
told that he was like his favorite deity. 

Among the Northmen, Odin and Thor were 
bloodthirsty deities of war and thunderstorms. 
When the Northmen conquered Rome the age was 
shocked with the cruel atrocities of the invaders. 
After the Egyptians abandoned themselves to the 
worship of Apis, the sacred bull, they became 
brutish. In India Kale, the most popular god, is 



40 A MAN'S REACH 

a murderer and robber and a patron of corrup- 
tion and rapine. The Dahomey people of the 
west coast of Africa are fetish worshipers, and 
are low and bestial. 

Contrast Solomon the servant of God and 
Solomon serving at idolatrous altars; he lost his 
call and his character and became a despicable 
fool. Samson forsook the true God, and Israelis 
noble judge became the Philistines' grain-grinder. 
So of the idols of self, and avarice, and dissipa- 
tion. Napoleon became the '^scourge and scav- 
enger of Europe." Shylock, bony and greedy, 
demanded the pound of flesh. Nero, Byron, Poe 
— alas! What derelicts on life's seas! 

So is it sublimely true that men may become 
like God if they worship and love him. As the 
daughter comes to be a counterpart of her sweet 
and loving mother, and as the son resembles his 
princely and handsome father, by the marvelous 
chemical affinities of love, so we become like God. 
Christ reveals the divine nature as possessing 
power, mercy, courage, patience, sympathy, self- 
denial, love, justice, forgiveness, hoUness, and life. 
Man has innately the germs in his nature of all 
these divine characteristics. 

It is only as man becomes a partaker of the 
divine nature that he attains the possibility of 
his own nature and comes to his own. For in- 
stance, look at man's innate sense of justice and 
right. In a fine essay on ''The Mystery of Jus- 
tice" Maurice Maeterlinck writes about ''the 



WHAT IS MAN? 41 

eternal presence of justice in the soul.'^ So 
exalted a sense of right is there instinctively in 
the soul of man that when he trespasses upon it 
he loses his self-respect. That is the greatest 
tragedy of the soul when self-respect is gone. 
True self-confidence is established upon what the 
soul intuitively knows to be right. In Victor 
Hugo's drama of the soul, Jean Valjean by acts 
of injustice destroyed the confidence which he 
needed to have in himself. '^Every man needs 
the sustaining knowledge of an honest past." No 
asset is so invaluable, no armor so invulnerable, 
as a clean record. There are no ghosts of a for- 
gotten past, and no sepulchral clanking of the 
skeletons in long-closed closets coming to un- 
nerve and defeat. The wrongs of a brilliant but 
wicked past at length brought Brutus to defeat 
in his last battle: 

"The ghost of Csesar hath appeared to me 
Two several times by night. 
I know my hour is come." 

And a httle later he compelled his friend, Strato,^ 
to hold his sword toward him, and rushing upon 
it to his suicide, Brutus cried, 

"Farewell, good Strato! 
Csesar, now be still! 
I kiird not thee with half so good a will." 

Conscience is the protest within us of our 
divine nature. If we honor and cultivate these 
godlike qualities of justice, and right, and truth, 



42 A MAN'S REACH 

we grow like God; if we trespass and trample 
upon them, we become like brutes and devils. 

This above all, to thine own self be true, 
And it must follow as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 

When we are true to our best self we are true 
to the God in us. Some one says: "Every soul is 
athirst, always athirst. It is that which marks 
the soul as infinite. The penalty of life is the 
passion for more life.'' I should say compensa- 
tion, not penalty. Yes, but it is the thirst for the 
Infinite. It is the Infinite in us striving for ex- 
pression. It is the divine soul seeking for expan- 
sion and growth — the creature "a, little lower 
than God" reaching up to him. As the steel to 
the magnet, as the star to its sun, as the babe to 
its mother, our souls go after the best. 

Therefore, if we would partake of the divine na- 
ture, we must put the body under subjection with 
its vanities, its indulgences, its foibles, and its 
slaveries. True life is spirit. The body is a cabin 
of clay to be kept in good order, but life is not 
this cabin. Put yourself under military regimen 
if the clay is mastering the spirit. Adorn your 
body with modest taste, supply simple and whole- 
some food, indulge in pleasures and recreations 
which are harmless and needful; but, remember, 
the body is only the rude casket which contains 
the precious jewel. The spirit is the soul. The 
spirit is God. Some in timidity, unequal to the 



WHAT IS MAN? 43 

contest, forsake the world, and in hermitages and 
monasteries seek to develop spirit. 

Let the God in you express himself. All art 
and music, all love and laughter, all beauty and 
light, the lark with its note, the sunbeam with its 
glow, the heart-throb with its love, are all ex- 
pressions of God. Every man has a Deity in his 
own breast. Once when Lincoln saw one of his 
soldiers going into a saloon he stepped up to him 
and, extending his hand, said, ^'Comrade, I don't 
like to see our uniforms going into these places.'* 
The man retraced his steps and ever after hated 
the saloon. So there is a God in our breast. We 
should not take this holy possession into places 
of sin and shadow. 

When, some time ago, a salute was being fired 
at Lima Point, near San Francisco, and Private 
John M. Jones, of Battery I, with his own hands 
extinguished the blaze that in an instant more 
would have ignited a fifty-pound bag of powder, 
thereby saving many lives, he became a heralded 
hero because he gave the God in him the right of 
way and permitted the divinity within him to ex- 
press itself. Character is the fine art of giving up. 



Ill 

HEROISM IN EVERYDAY LIFE 



45 



The hero is not fed on sweets, 
Daily his own heart he eats; 
Chambers of the great are jails, 
And head-winds right for royal sails. 

— Emerson. 

Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, uni- 
versally, among mankind. — Carlyle. 

Unbounded courage and compassion joined, 
Tempering each other in the victor's mind. 
Alternately proclaim him good and great. 
And make the hero and the man complete. 

— Addison. 



4a> 



CHAPTER III 
HEROISM IN EVERYDAY LIFE 

The only human product which continues to 
Hve in succeeding generations is character. Colos- 
sal architecture crumbles, but character hardens 
with age. Athens and Rome and Jerusalem are 
in ruins, but Pericles and Cicero and Solomon re- 
main. Character tends toward fixedness. Char- 
acter does not grow old; Moses is as familiar as 
Blackstone, Joshua as Wellington, Deborah as 
Queen Victoria, Homer as Dante, Ulysses as 
Bacon, and Saul as Henry the Eighth. 

Everyday life makes up most of the life of each 
of us. There are innumerable duties which must 
be discharged with the coming of each day. They 
come with such inexorable and mechanical regu- 
larity that many a person loses his vision in the 
wheels, and becomies merely a '^mechanized 
automaton.'^ 

As we have but one life to live, it is of para- 
mount importance that we shall adopt the right 
theory of life. At the parting of the ways many 
persons take the wrong path, and later must re- 
trace their steps in the midst of humility, and 
often disaster. Others ruthlessly ''tear out half 
of the pages of human life to light the fires of 
human passions"; and still others by thoughtless 

47 



48 A MAN'S REACH 

excesses stain the unturned leaves of their Hves, 
and must encounter these tragic blots in all the 
coming years. 

We hear much in these days of heroes and hero- 
ism, and rightfully so, for the normal man is a 
hero-worshiper. We believe in the Carnegie Hero 
Fund, and in the chivalric poems and sermons 
and incidents which shall stir our youth to a 
romantic interest in loftiest heroism. But I would 
call your attention to the greatest of all heroism: 
that heroism which does not receive the plaudits 
of the crowd, and which is not the cynosure of the 
eyes of the multitude. It is not richly rewarded 
by the benefactions of the rich, and does not have 
medals struck for its reward. 

With justifiable pride a man once showed me a 
beautiful silver medal which Queen Victoria had 
sent to him because he had saved several British 
subjects in a shipwreck off the coast of Washing- 
ton. I rejoiced with him in this richly deserved 
royal recognition — and I was glad he was an 
American; but just now I am thinking of the 
rescues and battles and sacrifices and generosities 
and invincible courage which are unheralded and 
unrecorded and unrewarded, but upon which the 
security and prosperity of the age depend. 

Many a man in a moment of emergency could 
rush at the risk of his life to the rescue of an im- 
periled brother; but that same man may not pos- 
sess the stalwart heroism necessary to withstand 
certain temptations which are insidiously ruining 



HEROISM IN EVERYDAY LIFE 49 

his life and bringing agony to those who love 
him. Not for a moment would I discount that 
heroism which hurries into death to save life, but 
I wish to honor especially those multitudinous 
heroes and heroines who without any public in- 
centives are really exemplifying the sublimest 
ideals of heroism. Daniel was hardly more than 
a boy when with his three young friends he was 
carried to Babylon as a Hebrew captive in that 
first deportation of Hebrews from Judah in B. C. 
604, during the reign of Jehoiakim. When he 
reached the court of Babylon he gained the favor 
of his superiors ; and he also registered a vow that 
he would abstain from all oriental excesses and 
idolatrous ceremonies. '^He purposed in his 
heart that he would not defile himself with the 
portion of the king's meat." His unwavering 
fidelity to his high ideals brought temporary 
indignity upon him, and hurled him at length 
into a den of hungry lions; but his invincible 
heroism in the humble duties of daily life elevated 
him at length to the seat next to the king. 

Nearly all deeds of conspicuous valor are pre- 
ceded by years of humble heroism with which the 
world at large is not familiar and in which it is 
littl^e interested. Unless a man is a hero in daily 
life he is not destined to become a true hero in 
public hfe. Heroism is a resultant of purpose 
and conviction and courage and character. Any 
such man is sure to become a notable hero if the 
culminating circumstance affords him the oppor- 



50 A MAN'S REACH 

tunity to exemplify his habit of Hfe and thought. 
Joseph cHmbed from a pit to a premiership along 
a path which led him through hatred and slander 
and imprisonment and ignominy, but he held 
steadily to his heroic principles faithfully incul- 
cated by his loving father. It requires more real 
heroism to be courageous and self-sacrificing when 
we are humble and unknown, and when nothing 
but extinction seems to await us. Joseph's 
greatest battles were fought on the threshold of 
his career when he was an obscure but a trusted 
servant in his master's house. Saul seeking his 
father's straying asses found a new heart and a 
kingdom. The pathway of duty is the direct 
route to princehness. Character is doing uncom- 
monly well the common things of life. That 
which makes the mother's character so divine is 
that there is no task too lowly for her dear, 
patient hands. 

There is some drudgery on the way to a scepter. 
Carlyle defines genius as an immense capacity for 
taking trouble. If you would serve your genera- 
tion, as Mary Lyon used to say, you must go 
where no one else will go and do what no one 
else will do. Ruskin found hidden jewels in the 
mud of London streets, so in life's humble tasks 
the most precious treasures lie. 

In the mud and scum of things 
There something alway, alway sings. 

God calls the people who can do things. His 
work must be done by the workers, not by the 



HEROISM IN EVERYDAY LIFE 51 

idlers or the leisure class. Napoleon insisted that, 
though there were eighteen million people in Italy, 
he had with difficulty found three men. Lincoln 
got his vision when he was faithfully discharging 
his duty as a deckhand on a Mississippi flatboat. 
We must not wait for great opportunities. ^^If 
the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, 
wouldst thou not have done it?" said a thoughtful 
servant to the enraged Naaman. He is a hero in 
daily life who does the right thing at the right time. 

The world's real heroes, then, are not those who 
wait for some really great thing, but who perform 
the somewhat trivial duties of life with heroic 
devotion. The pot of gold is not at the foot of the 
radiant rainbow, but at the end of the sometimes 
tedious path of duty — inexorable duty. Some 
people are so busy discharging their humble tasks 
that they have not time even to read the annals 
of chivalry and the records of heroism. Such 
people may be heroes in daily life if they cultivate 
hearts of contentment and peace, and accept their 
narrow spheres as their God-appointed tasks and 
privileges. 

God ''heartened" Saul. Character is God in- 
vesting and expressing himself in man. When God 
heartens a man he becomes a new creature, and 
hurries with the momentum of victory to his 
great work. A strong, beautiful, and useful hfe is 
God working in a life, and looking out through 
the windows of the soul in which he is an invited 
guest. 



52 A MAN'S REACH 

Those people are heroes in everyday hfe who 
are in love with their work. Any kind of work is 
blessed — it is holy, for '^to labor is to pray.'' If 
our task is not altogether to our liking, and in the 
fulfillment of our highest tastes and ambitions, 
yet if it is our present duty, we should fall in love 
with it. We should be thankful to God every day 
that we can work. When Charles Lamb said, 
'^Sabbathless Satan invented work," he misun- 
derstood the royalty and divinity of work. Labor 
stands on golden feet and every day wears a 
golden crown. 

I would rather take a pick and shovel and dig 
in the streets, and earn an honest dollar, and have 
a good appetite, and enjoy a good night's sleep, 
than to have no need to work and be the creature 
of slothful ease and enervating indulgence. The 
worker, if he falls in love with his task and is 
happy in his toil, is a hero in everyday life. We 
must be in love with life, or we shall have no 
impulses of true heroism. 

Give me the man with the sun in his face, 

And the shadows all dancing behind; 
Who can meet with reverses with calmness and grace 

And never forgets to be kind. 
For whether he's sovereign or merchant or clerk, 
I have faith in the man who's in love with his work. 

That man will not lose his love of life who 
maintains with increasing fervor hig passion for 
his work, for his faith, for his vision. It is said 
that Joshua Reynolds would sometimes labor 



HEROISM IN EVERYDAY LIFE 53 

over his canvases for thirty-six consecutive hours. 
Edison is a most indefatigable and obhvious 
worker. The fortunate writer was once invited to 
dine with Mr. and Mrs. Edison in their beautiful 
home in Menlo Park. It will not be violating 
any of the sacred proprieties of true hospitality 
for me to tell you that long after the hour ap- 
pointed for the dinner, and even after our ex- 
quisite hostess had seated us at the table, Mr. 
Edison came in. He had been so absorbed in his 
work that he had quite forgotten his social appoint- 
ment, and when reminded of it, hastened from 
his laboratory in his working garments, and with 
the stains of his honest, enthusiastic labor on his 
ingenious hands. The man who loses his passion 
in his work has really lost his mission. The 
foundation of exhaustless passion is unfaltering 
faith — faith in our work, faith in our God, faith 
in our life, and faith in our fellows. Only men 
who have been fused and fortified and infatuated 
and spurred by a dominating passion for doing 
and being have ever been anybody and done 
anything. Holy enthusiasm will make a hero or a 
heroine of each of us in everyday life. The word 
^'enthusiasm" is derived from en-theos-ism. The 
true enthusiasm is, therefore, inspired by God in 
each of us. It is said that a Roman army once 
fought so earnestly that they did not observe a 
fierce earthquake which shook the foundations 
beneath their feet. It is also stated by the his- 
torian that the Jews were so enthusiastic in their 



54 A MAN'S REACH 

efforts to rebuild Jerusalem that they made Jews 
of those who were around them. 

There is much to defile and distract. Only a 
passionate and determined zeal kept Daniel away 
from the debilitating and degenerating influence 
of the fashionable court life in Babylon. Things 
are not always right because they are fashionable ; 
indeed, they are more often wrong than right. 
Fashion and foible and dissipation are usually 
grouped together. Only heroic consecration can 
keep us in the safe channel when siren voices 
would lure us into inextricable dangers. 

Down in old Mexico some months ago young 
Jesu Garcia pulled a trainload of dynamite into 
the mining town of Nacozari. As he was slowing 
down his engine he discovered with horror that 
the train had caught fire, and he knew that in a 
few moments the deadly dynamite would explode 
and bring sudden disaster upon the three thousand 
sleeping inhabitants in the little city. He did not 
hesitate for a single instant. He warned all the 
crew on the train to save themselves and then 
put on a full head of steam and hurried the train 
into the mountains. He had not gone many 
miles when what he anticipated occurred. The 
tragical explosion took place, and the soul of 
Jesu Garcia went into eternity in a chariot of fire; 
and to-day they are building a monument to this 
brave Mexican boy in the state of Sonora. Fi- 
delity is heroism. If we are faithful in the some- 
what irksome and tedious toil of to-day, we shall 



HEROISM IN EVERYDAY LIFE 55 

receive our crown and our kingdom to-morrow. 
The tapestry-weaver will come forth at length 
and view his labor from the right side of his loom. 
There is an exquisite story of a faithful Hebrew 
stonemason who was set to work in an under- 
ground quarry upon a stone of peculiar design to 
be placed in the temple at Jerusalem. For weary 
and numberless days he worked upon it — cutting 
and polishing after a most elaborate design. At 
length the day of dedication had come and was 
ushered in with the sound of silver trumpets. 
The happy workman took with him Rachel, his 
wife, and Benjamin, his son. With entrancing 
interest they examined in detail the massive 
structure until at last their astonished vision dis- 
covered in a royal archway the central stone 
upon which the patient workman had spent his 
months of loving endeavor. It was the glistening 
keystone of the main entrance of Solomon^s ma- 
jestic temple to the living God. 

There was murder in Carroll County, and the sheriff had taken 

his man. 
But through the hills and the valley the ominous rumor ran 
That if ever the word was spoken that sent to jail their kin, 
The Aliens would rear a shambles where the court of law had 

been! 

But, still untouched by the terror, the law had had its way; 
Floyd Allen stood for sentence in the peace of a quiet day. 
Silent, imfettered, he stood there, his face the hue of stone. 
And it seemed that his clan had left him to bear his fate alone. 

Then ere a word was uttered the door swung open wide, 
And the pride and strength of the mountain strode noisily 
inside. 



56 A MAN'S REACH 

Around the judge and the jury and the officers of the law 
The circle slowly tightened, and Judge Thornton Massie saw 

That he framed his own death sentence; but he rose, and the 

dingy room 
Took on the spell of splendor as he spoke the words of doom ! 
Then the guns roared out their answer, and the judge fell on his 

face 
And the murky smoke of murder spread through the tainted place. 

Goad, who read the record, and Foster, who made the plea, 
Fell in the selfsame volley, but ere the room was free 
From the shock a pistol sounded and each man held his breath 
As the sheriff of Carroll County strode in to his certain death! 

Cruel were the odds against him, but the odds were naught to 

him. 
For his bullet found Floyd Allen ere the sight of his eyes grew dim. 
Then down with Massie and Foster, on the growing heap on the 

floor, 
In his clutch the empty weapon that his hand should use no 

more. 
He dreamed that he still protected the dead that round him lay, 
Till the thirst for murder slackened and the mountaineers rode 

away. 

Massie and Webb and Foster — long may their memory live. 
Who had naught to give but their lifeblood and gave what they 

had to give! 
They died for thy laws, Virginia — on thy historic breast 
No braver sons have fallen, no truer heroes rest! 

Not in the roar of battle, when the blood runs strong and high, 
In the stiller paths of duty they laid them down to die. 
And the nation that is waiting, with half-averted ear. 
For the low and distant murmur that the Future has to hear, 

Should make their names the slogan of the cause their vision saw — 
The sanctity of human life and the majesty of law! 
The slogan that shall echo till it drowns all local cry — 
The cause our lives must cherish lest our republic die! 

— Arthur Hobson Quinn. 



IV 

THE HUMAN HAND 



67 



* 5 



Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. — 

Solomon. 

They may seize 
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand. 

— Shakespeare. 

Sink or swim, hve or die, sm-vive or perish, I give my hand 
and my heart to this vote. — Daniel Webster. 

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her 
cunning. — King David. 



m 



CHAPTER IV 
THE HUMAN HAND 

The hand is the most ingenious tool. It was 
called by Galen the instrument of instruments. 
It was eulogized by Cicero and by all writers 
before and since. No other animal possesses it. 
It is the principal organ of feeling; it may become 
eyes to the blind and hearing to the deaf. So 
responsive is it that often character can be read 
in the palm of the hand. The hand shows the 
marvelous wisdom and providence of God. It is 
the symbol of action. The hands are lifted in 
prayer, extended in expostulation, clasped in a 
bargain, folded in sleep, laid on in blessing, raised 
in oath, chnched in defiance, and joined at the 
hymeneal altar. To smite the hands is a sign of 
grief, to give the right hand is a pledge of fidelity, 
to kiss the hands is an act of homage, and to wash 
the hands is a sign of innocence. Clean hands 
mean a holy life, and bloody hands a murderous 
heart. 

The hand is an instrument of power and con- 
quest. With his hand man has conquered the 
external world. He has harnessed the winds and 
waves and cataracts. He has imprisoned the sun- 
beams and bridled the lightning. He has seized 
the thunderbolts and collected the electrical cur- 

59 



60 A MAN'S REACH 

rents. He has transformed coal and water into 
power and light, and he has destroyed kingdoms 
and built empires and republics. The trained 
hand involves the head and the heart. The 
thirteen-inch gun requires the skilled hand of the 
man behind the gun. The telegraph instrument 
and type-setting machine are useless without the 
hand to direct. Without the steady hand the 
locomotive engine would stand still on the tracks, 
or lie helpless in the ditch, and without the fine 
technic of the hand the massive musical instru- 
ment, or the delicate violin, would be full of 
discords. With the hand man has made himself 
a master in painting, sculpture, music, and 
architecture. 

'What is that in thine hand?" Moses in 
Midian had a shepherd's crook in his hand; he 
used it in obedience to God's command, and it 
became his token and scepter of power. With 
that rod plagues were brought, water burst out 
of a rock, seas were divided, and Israel prevailed 
over enemies in war. God used the implement 
with which Moses was most familiar as a shep- 
herd. So did God use David's sling, Shamgar's 
ox-goad, and the jawbone of an ass in Samson's 
giant hand. So were Aaron's fluency of speech, 
Paul's logic, and the patience and industry of the 
painstaking fishermen, Peter, James, and John, 
made available to our heavenly Father. 

Our talents, meager or generous, become our 
opportunities when God asks, ''What is that in 



THE HUMAN HAND 61 

thine hand?" ''God has chosen the weak things 
of the world to confound the mighty." The 
worm Jacob was used to thresh a mountain. A 
Uttle company of Pilgrim Fathers has become a 
vast nation and an obscure Bible class teacher 
a world-wide evangelist. A printer's apprentice 
became a patriot, diplomat, philosopher, and 
electrician. A Galena storekeeper became the 
mightiest warrior of his time; and a group of 
devout men, who were sarcastically denounced as 
a ''nest of consecrated cobblers," not only pro- 
duced the greatest intellectual giant of the 
eighteenth century, but, with the whole world as 
a parish, these Methodist folk are carrying the 
gospel of free salvation to the ends of the earth. 

William Booth and George Williams and Francis 
Clark had something in their hands — a bare talent, 
it would seem, in the beginning, but when God 
accepted their gifts there resulted the marvelous 
institutions for the ameliorations of man and the 
preserving of the youth of the world, known as 
the Salvation Army, the Young Men's Christian 
Association, and the Christian Endeavor Society. 
When God can have the privilege of using a 
human hand he makes it his own. "What is that 
in thine hand?" What is your individual ability, 
either endowed or acquired? God wants what is 
in your hand — your one talent, your two talents, 
or your five talents. 

God wants your strong arm; your physical ca- 
pacities are to be dedicated to him. He wants 



62 A MAN'S REACH 

your good health, your honest heart, your culti- 
vated mind, your sympathy, your faith, your 
cheerfulness, and your loyalty. He wants your 
money. We must often spell ^^pity'^ with our 
purse and ' ^Christian' ^ with our checkbook. 

"What is that in thine hand?" Is it a hoe or a 
needle or a broom? Is it a pen or a sword? Is it 
a ledger or a schoolbook? Is it a typewriter or a 
telegraph instrument? Is it an anvil or a printer's 
rule? Is it a carpenter's plane or a plasterer's 
trowel? Is it a throttle or a helm? Is it a scalpel 
or a yardstick? Is it a musical instrument or the 
gift of song? Whatever it is, give it to God in 
loving service. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to 
do, do it with thy might." In the Scripture 
there was a man with a "withered hand." A 
"withered hand" — what pathos, what tragedy! 
How uneven are the chances of success in the 
world to a man with a withered hand! Such is a 
handicap indeed. 

With a sweeping glance go back through the 
ages and about the round world to-day. Look 
at the marvelous transformations which have 
been wrought by the human hand. There is not 
a massive pyramid, nor a minster grand and 
eloquent in marble or granite, nor a mighty 
bridge spanning tumultuous rivers and cataracts, 
nor sacred memorials rising to dizzy heights, nor 
stately ships carrying people enough to make a 
city and freight enough to make a capital of 
commerce, that are not all the willing offerings 



THE HUMAN HAND 63 

of busy hands. Every ingenious device and in- 
vention, from the dehcate needle in the hand to 
the factory filled with spindles and shuttles; 
from the patient clock ticking on the mantel and 
the oxcart rumbling over the highway to the 
orchestral chimes on yonder church tower; and 
the cable which hurries its message through the 
hidden channels of the sea, or the wireless magi- 
cian who has become familiar with the mysterious 
highways of space, are the products of man's 
hand. What of all this if every man had had a 
withered hand? What of all the sculptured mar- 
bles breathing with life? What of all the divine 
canvases palpitating with immortaUty? What of 
all the enchanting minstrelsies of harp or organ? 
What of divine ideals forever willingly incar- 
cerated in cathedral towers and domes, in groined 
arch or frescoed wall, in Corinthian capitol or 
Doric pilaster? 

What if that hand had been withered which 
held the brush of a Raphael, or the chisel of an 
Angelo, or the harp of a Mozart, or the pen of a 
Shakespeare, or the quill of a Macaulay, or the 
gesture of a Webster, or the telescope of a Galileo, 
or the microscope of a Pasteur, or the sword of a 
Grant, or the throttle of a Stephenson, or the 
rudder of a Fulton, or the lever of an Archimedes, 
or the scepter of a Victoria, or the steady, invin- 
cible nerve of an Abraham Lincoln, whose hand 
by one fell blow broke the shackles of a race of 
immortal souls? 



64 A MAN'S REACH 

There are many men and women to-day with 
withered hands — ^hands that are most active and 
aggressive in the things of ambition and frivoUty, 
but in all labor for Christ and humanity they 
hang palsied and lifeless. Where, to-day, would 
be the kingdom of Jesus Christ if all the intrepid 
and self-sacrificing workers had had withered 
hands? Who would have struck the strong, tell- 
ing blows for truth if Moses and Nehemiah, 
Daniel and Paul, Constantine and Charlemagne, 
Huss and John Knox, Erasmus and Wesley, 
Jonathan Edwards and Asbury had had with- 
ered hands? And where, to-day, would be our 
republic with its lofty ideals of patriotism with- 
out a Washington, a Jefferson, a Patrick Henry, 
and a Wendell Phillips? And what of lands lying 
in heathen darkness if a Xavier, or a Francis of 
Assisi, a Carey, a Livingstone, a Taylor, a Tho- 
burn, or a Butler had not gladly responded to the 
sob of dying souls in submerging paganism and 
gone forth to do with their might what their 
hands found to do? 

One of the most pathetic things I ever saw 
was a man with a withered arm. It hung shriveled 
and useless from his shoulder, a humiliation to 
the owner and a distress to his friends. It made 
him supersensitive and irritable and at times an 
almost impossible companion. But the most pa- 
thetic and tragic thing in the world is a Christian 
with "si withered hand.'' He is not only a useless 
cripple, but he is faultfinding of God and man; 



THE HUMAN HAND 65 

he is doubting and unhappy — his hand is withered 
— and his interest and love and loyalty and peace 
and hope and patience and self-denial are all 
blighted — withered all. A church full of people 
with withered hands would not only be a hospital, 
but it would be a forbidding charnel house. But 
this is not an incurable ailment. Christ said to 
the man with '^the withered hand," "Stretch forth 
thine hand." The poor unfortunate did not be- 
lieve he could — he hadn't for years stretched it 
forth — but he obeyed, and "it was restored whole 
like as the other." 

The Master is saying, "Stretch forth thine 
hand." Do it, brother. Obey! There is life, 
character, achievement, service, career, immor- 
tality in that hand — stretch it forth ! For Christ's 
sake, for your own sake, for humanity's sake, 
stretch it forth! — now! 

"Clean hands" are a token of a holy life. 
"Clean hands" are the countersign by which we 
pass the guards of the City Celestial. We must 
show our hands at the Judgment. If our hands 
are clean, our hearts will be pure. Listen to 
Lady Macbeth after her murderous deed: 

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
Clean from my hands? No, this my hand will rather 
The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
Making the green one red." 

Remember "all the perfumes of Arabia could 
not sweeten" the little hand of the bloody queen; 
but we can wash our hands in the blood of Christ 



66 A MAN'S REACH 

and make them white as snow. The bloodstains 
on the hands of vacillating Pilate and avaricious 
Judas will ever return to vex and torture in an 
eternity of woe. 

From the carnage of Waterloo Wellington 
wrote, ''The hand of God was upon me, and I 
escaped unhurt." Even in our maturity and 
manhood God cradles and soothes our troubled, 
trusting souls in the hollow of his hand. ''He 
shall feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall 
gather the lambs in his arm, and carry them in 
his bosom.'' 

"Do it with thy might" until there are marks 
on your hands. Marks on the hands were tokens 
of servitude. Jesus's dear hands bore "prints of 
the nails" — a willing slavery of love. The 
hands of the father are often hard and horny 
with toil — gladsome labor for the little family at 
home; and what hands are so sweet and sooth- 
ing as the mother's beautiful hands? The 
nearly dying soldier boy was revived by the 
unexpected touch of his mother's hand, and he 
recovered. 

"Do it with thy might," for there is "no work, 
or device, or knowledge, or wisdom in the grave 
whither thou goest." Procrastination is disaster. 
Do it now. This is the day of opportunity. The 
scapegoat bearing the sins of the people of Israel 
was led forth "by the hand of a fit man." God 
has honorable commissions, and errands of mercy 
and love for a great needy world. He has truths 



THE HUMAN HAND 67 

to reveal to those who are studious and faithful. 
But he must have ^'the hand of a fit man." 

Had Moses failed to go, . . . 
There would have been 
For him no leadership to win! 
No pillared fire; no magic rod; 
No wonders in the land of Zin; 
No smiting of the sea; no tears 
Ecstatic shed on Sinai's steep; 
No Nebo, with a God to keep 
His burial; only forty years 
Of desert, watching with his sheep. 

Do something, do it now, and do it thought- 
fully! A man bought an afternoon paper as he 
stepped upon a trolley car; later in the evening 
he discovered he had, instead of a penny, given 
a five-dollar gold piece to the newsboy. What is 
in your hand? Place the right value upon it, and 
give it to Christ and humanity. 

Do you remember the story of the eccentric old 
Irishman, who once had the distinguished honor 
of grasping the hand of the king, and, thence- 
forth, to the end of his life he declined to shake 
hands with anybody else? When Wellington had 
commissioned one of his bravest generals to a 
most difficult and perilous charge, the valiant 
soldier laid his hand on the arm of Waterloo's 
providential victor, and said, "In the strength of 
that arm I shall go forth to victory.'' And so we 
are permitted to place our hand on the arm out- 
stretched and bleeding on Calvary, and go forth 
to certain victory for Christ and truth. 



68 A MAN'S REACH 

Somewhere in romantic fable or song the story 
is told of a valorous prince who went forth to find 
the maiden with the most beautiful hands, that 
he might make her his wife. And so all the fond 
fathers and ambitious mothers sought to preserve 
and beautify the hands of their daughters by pro- 
tecting them from being hardened by service and 
pricked by sewing and embroidery. But one day 
a lovely girl, in rescuing an animal from suffering 
and death, had the ^ 'white wonder" of her soft 
hands so frightfully torn and marred that the 
cruel scars could never be removed. The prince 
promptly wooed and won her and made her his 
queen. 

A young Negro arrived in Boston for the first 
time seeking employment. As he made his way 
along the intricate streets tugging a very heavy 
valise which contained all his earthly possessions, 
almost overcome by fatigue and loneliness, he 
felt a hand slipped in beside his own as a kindly 
man helped him to carry his load. The grateful 
boy thanked his new friend, and the man replied, 
''Look up, and lift up, and lend a hand.'' And 
that was a notable day for the Negro race and for 
human character when Edward Everett Hale 
eased the burden of Booker T. Washington. The 
obscure, ignorant child of slavery got his vision 
and call; and already a whole race has felt the 
uplifting power of his ready hand. 

Mary was only thirteen, the eldest of seven 
children. Her mother was dying in her narrow 



THE HUMAN HAND 69 

tenement quarters. She called Mary to her bed- 
side, and said: ^'I must leave you and you must 
be mother now to the children. Be patient with 
father; you know he is kind to us when he is not 
in drink, so be patient when he comes home and 
abuses you, and keep the children together. 
Don't let them be separated. God help you, 
the task is hard, and you so young!" And the 
mother was gone. Little Mary bravely entered 
upon her holy commission. But, two years later, 
a fever brought her to the gate of heaven. She 
told her sad story to a deaconess who was ten- 
derly ministering to her; and then said: ''Now I 
I am dying as mother did. I have been patient 
with father and I have kept the children together, 
but I am afraid to die. I have not gone to church 
because I have had no fit clothes, and I have been 
too tired of nights to say my prayers. Now, what 
can I say to Jesus when I see him up there?" 

The wise and ready little deaconess took the 
small hands, hardened by toil for others, and 
said: ^'Don't say anything, Mary. Just show 
him your hands." 

The faith of the head is the faith that is dead; 
The faith of the heart is better in part; 
But the faith of the hand is the faith that will stand, 
For the faith that will do must include the first two. 



V 

A CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE 



71 



It is the common wonder of all men how among so many 
millions of faces there should be none alike. — Sir Thomas Browne. 

How some they have died, and some they have left me, 
And some are taken from me; all are departed; 
All are gone, the old familiar faces. 

— Charles Lamb. 

All men's faces are true, O whatsome'er their hands are — 
Shakespeare. 



72 



CHAPTER V 
A CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE 

The human face is the most wonderful visible 
thing which God has made. It is a token of per- 
sonality, because, with all the multiplied millions 
of human beings that have lived and are alive 
to-day (what must be the boundless resources of 
creative genius?), we find that no two faces are 
alike. Homely or handsome as our face may be, 
it is ours, and ours only, for it has no exact 
duphcate. 

Milton sings of '^the human face divine'' be- 
cause God seems to reveal himself in the subtile 
and absorbing beauty of some human coun- 
tenances. Cervantes says of one of his charac- 
ters, ''he had a face like a benediction," because 
blessing and comfort beamed from it upon those 
whom he met. Bulwer Lytton said, ''A good face 
is a letter of recommendation," which recalls an 
ancient maxim, ''A pleasing countenance is a 
silent commendation." The best credential one 
carries when he seeks friends or position is not 
some letter which an indulgent acquaintance has 
given in extravagant praise of his humble virtues, 
but his own face, where sincerity and integrity 
nestle as certainly and yet as mysteriously as 

73 



74 A MAN'S REACH 

fragrance clings to the starry jasmine. A poet 
sang adoringly of his sweetheart, 

There is a garden in her face, 
Where roses and white Ulies grow. 

And Wordsworth's '^Highland Girl" had 

A face with gladness overspread, 
Soft smiles by human kindness bred. 

The face is a telltale. It betrays guilt or be- 
tokens fidelity; it shadows discontent or en- 
shrines happiness. Shakespeare, in "Much Ado 
About Nothing," says. 

You have such a February face. 
So full of frost, of storm, of cloudiness! 

The face is a map of the soul : 

There's no art 

To find the mind's construction in the face. 

"A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance." 
The face tells of victory or defeat. If a man does 
not master his trials, they will conquer him. It is 
of the old schoolmaster in the "Deserted Village" 
that Goldsmith sings. 

Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face. 

The glorious "morning face" is the true test of 
beauty and character, for sleep relaxes the line of 
conflict and confusion, and the face resumes its 
wonted calm while we sleep; and in the morning, 
before the fierce tempests of another day have 
swept over the soul, the face is natural and com- 



A CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE 75 

posed and characteristic. Can you ever forget, 
would you ever forget, your mother's exquisite 
^'morning face," as its sweet radiance awakened 
your boyish slumbers, or as its placid beauty wel- 
comed you at the threshold of a new day, her 
soft cheeks pressed against your tanned face and 
her gentle eyes beaming numberless and fervent 
benedictions? 

I have not heard that either in girlhood or 
maturity my mother's face has ever been men- 
tioned by admiring painter, or studious sculptor, 
but hers (and one other face, and it may not be 
strange that there are many lines of striking 
resemblance in these two faces) gathers into 
itself to me all the dreams of ambitious artists, 
and it would exhaust all the talents of well- 
endowed genius to reproduce on canvas all the 
exquisite beauty and divinity of my mother's 
dear face. 

Each man is a sculptor, and his own face is the 
plastic clay. Our faces should be something more 
than a conspicuous almanac showing the inexor- 
able and drastic flight of the years; they should 
bear the master touches of noble genius. What- 
ever face nature gives us — and nature seems more 
kindly disposed to some — it can be made more or 
less attractive by its possessor. There is an old 
classic which says, ''A woman cannot choose 
whether she shall be handsome at twenty, but it 
is her fault if she is not beautiful at forty." 

A happy childhood is the best prescription for 



76 A MAN'S REACH 

cheerful countenances. If we would have beauti- 
ful faces, we must begin early, and not permit 
corroding care to carve ruthless wrinkles, or some 
grumbling and faultfinding Rusticus to plow in- 
eradicable furrows. Anything which despoils the 
human face is a sin not only against its possessor, 
but against a humanity which must constantly 
behold it. Many are the marred faces which sin 
has made — the bleared eyes, the bloated cheeks, 
the swollen Hps. What a tragical travesty on the 
baby face which, forty years before, in dimpled 
divinity, found its soft pillow in its mother^s 
bosom! One of the fearful monstrosities of 
human experience is the dire transformation which 
sin can make from the angelic beauty of a baby 
face into the fierce and fiendish countenance of 
the wicked man, whose excesses and depravities 
have made his soul a jungle of wild beasts and 
his face a devastated battlefield of murderous 
combats. 

What possibilities of infinite exaltation or 
tragic degradation lie concealed in the human 
face! There are eyes that, like lighthouses, may 
guide to havens of safety, or, like will-o'-the- 
wisps, may lure to inextricable bogs and in- 
evitable death; eyes that may weep with sym- 
pathy or wither with scorn; saintly eyes that may 
beckon to holy altars and restful paradises and 
heavenly rewards, or siren's eyes, whose deadly 
glances lead to entangling labyrinths and vampire 
habitations and the desolations of death. There 



A CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE 77 

are snake's eyes in human faces whose hypnotic 
stare ends in disgrace and destruction. 

There are hps whose expressions of love and 
whose messages of consolation and whose elo- 
quence of appeal have awakened slumbering 
genius and aroused sleeping natures and stirred 
patriots and saints to duty. There are lips whose 
kiss can make painters and patriots and patri- 
archs; for Benjamin West said his mother's kiss 
made him a painter, and John Randolph declared 
that his mother's prayers saved him from French 
atheism. And there are lips that may coin tender 
ministries of love and sympathy, or that may be 
curled with bitter irony and biting sarcasm, or 
that may reveal the dark abysses of a Judas's 
heart. 

The human face — have you e'er mused and sighed 

Upon its power, this Httle round from brow to chin? 
The thumb and fingers span it — have you tried 

To sound its depths, its love to lose or win? 
The eyes that look at you with heaven's own hght, 

That quicken to the highest call, or woo 
To hell and all forgetfulness of right, 

The eyes so potent with the hearts that sue! 

The hmnan face — these lips that tell and feel 
All that the world can hold from pole to pole; 

Their kiss can change a kingdom, and the weal 
Of human destiny is there — they own the soul; 

We shall be judged by eyes and mouth at last, 

Whatever Ufe may come — whatever life is passed. 

— W. 0. Partridge. 

Real beauty does not consist in complexion or 
profile, but in the character which glows in the 



7B A MAN^S REACH 

countenance. Serenity of expression is the re- 
ward of faith, fidehty, and repose. Sleep, a quiet 
mind, a kindly spirit, and supreme trust in God 
make lovely faces. 

The light upon her face 

Shines from the windows of another world. 

Saints only have such faces. 

Our faces are the windows of the soul, through 
which our real characters look and are seen. 

The harlots in the olden time '^covered their 
faces.'' People who lose their self-respect hide 
their faces. A guilty man will not look you in 
the face. Men talk about "saving their faces," 
by which they mean their self-respect. One of 
the most pathetic things in the world is the un- 
successful efforts which women who have lost 
their characters make to appear beautiful and 
respectable. Like Samson, "They wist not that 
their strength [beauty] is gone from them." O 
how frightful are the ravages of sin! When the 
pearl of true modesty has been bartered, and 
when the source of real strength has been sur- 
rendered, what travesties of womanhood and 
what tragedies of manhood! And the face tells 
the whole story. 

When Leonardo Da Vinci was painting his 
great masterpiece on the walls of the Refectory 
in Milan he left two faces until the last. He 
looked far and wide for a face which could give 
him some conception for the face of Jesus. After 
a long period of unrequited search, at length one 



A CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE 79 

day as he worshiped in the great cathedral he saw 
the face of a young man in the choir, whose fea- 
tures fulfilled in many ways the artist's ideal; 
and he secured the young man's permission to sit 
for him; and Da Vinci completed the central 
figure in his immortal ''The Last Supper." The 
painting, however, remained unfinished for many 
years because the great artist could not find a face 
as a model for Judas. He frequented haunts of 
vice and associated with criminals in a vain search, 
until, at length, in a prison cell in Rome, he found 
a face and head whose eyes, lips, and hideous 
contour realized to the artist his true ideal of the 
wicked Iscariot; and he completed his master- 
piece. But the choir singer and the confirmed 
criminal were the same man. The rapid flight 
of years had transformed the young man into a 
demon of wickedness and wretchedness and 
treachery and treason. And his face told the 
tragic story. 

The prophet Isaiah, in his contest with his 
enemies, determined that he would not flinch, 
and he declared, ''I have set my face like a flint, 
and I know that I shall not be ashamed." So 
must our wills unyieldingly and steadfastly con- 
tend for the right. It was said by Luke that 
''When the time was come that Jesus should be 
received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to 
Jerusalem." If we would reach the goal and 
come to happy ascension summits we must set 
our faces steadfastly. It may lead us to ignominy 



80 A MAN'S REACH 

and suffering, to Gethsemanes and Calvarys, but 
beyond the Kedron rises Olivet. 

A steadfast face brings momentum and des- 
tination. The momentum of a will reenforced by 
character will carry us through bitter persecu- 
tions and malicious criticisms and mock trials and 
bloody Golgothas, and bring us to lofty moun- 
taintops of stepping-stones unto eternal glory. 
Daniel said, ''I set my face unto the Lord God!" 
Paul set his face like a flint to go to Rome and 
make his appeal to Caesar. Luther set his face 
like a flint to go to Worms, although the devils 
were as many as the tiles upon the housetops. 
Columbus set his face like a flint toward the west 
until a new continent rewarded him for his 
fidelity. General U. S. Grant set his face like a 
flint for peace, until the victories of Vicksburg 
were followed by the surrender of Appomattox. 
Wellington set his face like a flint until Waterloo 
became the product and Saint Helena the sequel 
of his righteous purpose. John Wesley set his 
face like a flint until a new evangelism swept over 
England, and established itself on permanent 
foundations in the New World. Every person in 
every field of honest endeavor who has achieved 
any triumph worth while has gone forth with 
invulnerable armor, and with dauntless and un- 
flinching courage, with his face set like a flint. 
Such men are men of strong faces. There 
never was a brave heart behind a weak face, 
for if a merry heart makes a cheerful counte- 



A CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE 81 

nance, a brave heart makes a strong and virile 
face. 

The man who makes the world go may have 
set lips and steady eyes and square jaws and a 
line or two on his brow; and because he is a man 
of action and character his face will betoken his 
deeds. Look out for the man with the flinty face! 
He will lead your armies to victory, your ex- 
plorers to north poles and mountaintops, your 
students to the solution of intricate problems, 
your philanthropists and reformers to new schemes 
for the amelioration of mankind, your Chris- 
tian work to summits of earnest endeavor, and 
your Christian characters to altitudes of holiness, 
and valleys of humility, and plains of generous 
ministry, which will hasten the universal sway of 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 



Faces, faces, 
Crowding city streets and places, 
Bright with hope, and love, and laughter, 

Dark with passions of despair. 
O the story of the faces! — 
Angel faces, demon faces, 
Faces, faces everywhere. 



O the pathos of the faces! — 
Blighted hopes and dark disgraces, 
When the angel robe is spotted, 

And the white soul stained with sin; 
O the story of the faces! — 
Women faces, youthful faces, 

All the harp-cords strained and broken 
Ere the anthem could begin. 



82 A MAN'S REACH 

O the pallor of the faces, 
Fleeing from the cold death places, 
Seeking in the shouting highways 
Respite from the hell within! 
O the sadness of the faces! — 
Mother faces, traitor faces. 
Haggard with the toil and watching, 
By the night lamp, pale and thin. 

O the horror of the faces! — 
Scowling, frowns, and dark menaces. 
Sodden with a thousand vices. 
Hideous with the brand of Cain. 
O the terror of the faces! — 
Felon faces, traitor faces. 

Plague spots on the fair creation. 
Nightmares of a fevered brain. 

O the beauty of the faces! — 
Sunny locks and fairy graces, 

Little wandering gleams of heaven 
Lost among the ways o' men. 
O the brightness of the faces! — 
Maiden faces, childish faces. 
Beauty in all forms and phases, 
Sojourner and denizen. 

Faces, faces. 
Crowding city streets and places — 
Faces smooth with youth and beauty, 
Faces lined with age and care, 
O the story of the faces. 
Of the glad and weary faces. 
Of the faces everywhere! 

— Anonymous. 

When men and women have been with God in 
Sinai's summits or Hermon's soUtudes their faces 
will shine with unwonted light. After his forty 
days with God in the mountain of the law, when 



A CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE 83 

Moses descended with ^'the words of the cov- 
enant, the ten commandments/' so brilHantly did 
his face shine that it was necessary for him to put 
a "veil on his face/' and ''Aaron and all the chil- 
dren of Israel were afraid to come nigh him." So 
when man has seen God face to face his own 
countenance will carry evidences of his holy 
interview. 

No man or woman is ready for life until he has 
had his vision of God. Life, duty, personality 
all wait for their true interpretation until man 
has seen God face to face. When Saul of Tarsus 
saw Christ face to face, the student of Gamaliel 
became a flaming apostle of righteousness, and 
Areopagites and kings and princes began to 
tremble and believe. Peter's Pentecost converts 
became the nucleus of the Christian Church. 
Each drop of Stephen's blood sprang up from the 
ground as a knight of the cross armed with love 
and light. The tinker's simple story was made 
a message of salvation to the world! This same 
heavenly vision created the rude types of Guten- 
burg, the engine of Watts, and the delicate instru- 
ments of Morse and Marconi and Edison, until 
men reverently exclaimed, ''What hath God 
wrought!" 

It inspired the brush of Raphael, and immortal 
canvases gleamed with perfect ideals. It steadied 
the chisel of Angelo, and cold marble breathed 
with life and emotion. It touched the harp of 
Milton, and the stately stanzas of "Paradise 



84 A MAN^S REACH 

Lost'' became the rhythmical measures of "Para- 
dise Found." And, by the grace and favor of 
God, the natural becomes the spiritual, the 
human the divine, the finite the Infinite, all 
because man has seen God face to face. Visions 
of Christ transform characters and transfigure 
faces. It is related that two rough boys attended 
one of John Wesley's meetings with their pockets 
filled with stones, intending to hurl the missiles 
at the preacher and to break up the meeting. 
Wesley was in his old age, and as he preached his 
heart was warmed and his face shone with such 
wondrous light that one boy said to the other, 
"He's not a man, Bill; he's not a man." At the 
close of the meeting, as Wesley passed out, the 
boy pressed up to him, and touched the saintly 
man, and in low tones he said to his friend, "Bill, 
he is a man; he is a man!" 

Wesley heard the voice, and when he saw the 
face of the astonished lad he said, "The Lord 
bless thee, my boy." And both of these coarse 
fellows were soundly converted and became ardent 
workers for Christ, because Wesley had seen God 
face to face. It was once said of the poet Keats, 
"His face was like the face of one who had seen a 
vision." 

Count Tolstoy had so homely a face as a child 
that his mother one day said to him, "You know, 
Nikolinka, no one will love you for your face, 
and therefore you must endeavor to be a good 
and sensible boy." In his old age Tolstoy said 



A CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE 85 

that all along through life those words of his 
mother had been a ministry of blessing to him. 
He placed the emphasis on his character. 

A few years ago the most familiar name in the 
social circles of Paris was Madame de Circourt. 
She was a woman of very imattractive coun- 
tenance. Her mother said to her when she was 
a girl, ^^My poor child, I fear it will be very hard 
for you to win love in this world — indeed, even to 
make friends.'' For a time she took her misfor- 
tune very much to heart. At length she began to 
cultivate amiability and kindliness. She was kind 
to everybody and everything. Needy children 
were the objects of her special care. She was 
kind to her servants, to strangers, to the birds, 
and the beasts. To render somebody a service 
was her supreme and happy piu-pose. She be- 
came at length the idol of a great city. Her home 
was noted for its cordial hospitality, and her 
heart was a place of shelter for all who needed 
consolation and good cheer. The unusual plain- 
ness of her features and complexion was forgotten 
in the exquisite loveliness of her beautiful, un- 
selfish life. 

It was once said of a man, "His face is a thanks- 
giving for all his past life and a love-letter to all 
mankind." What a ministry of refinement and 
cheer is such a face in the midst of the hurry and 
turmoil and scowl and frown and frivolity of the 
passing throngs! 

An anxious woman once went with the Hon. 



86 A MAN'S REACH 

Thaddeus Stevens to ask Mr. Lincoln to pardon 
her soldier son, who had been court-martialed and 
sentenced either to death or imprisonment. After 
hearing all the particulars, the President promptly 
issued the pardon papers. After they had left 
the grateful, happy woman exclaimed, "I knew 
it was a copperhead lie!" 

''What do you refer to, madam?" asked Mr. 
Stevens. 

"Why, they told me that he was an ugly man, 
and he has the handsomest face I ever saw," was 
the answer. 

There are no lines so beautiful in the human 
face as those which tender sympathy gives. Sym- 
pathy makes of the eyes little lakes of liquid 
blue, and of the cheeks shining orbs of soft sun- 
light, and of the voice a ripple of enchanting 
melody. A merry heart, a peaceful heart, a 
sincere heart, a kindly heart, a holy heart maketh 
a cheerful, beautiful countenance. 

The Hon. Benjamin Brewster is remembered as 
at one time the brilliant attorney-general of the 
United States. In his boyhood, when his little 
sister fell into an open fireplace, he gallantly 
rescued her, but in doing so his own face was 
terribly burned. He carried that horrible dis- 
figurement all through his life; but to those who 
knew of the manner in which he had attained 
this badge of fidelity his frightfully distorted 
features were forgotten. Once on an ocean voy- 
age Mr. Brewster was given a chair at the dining 



A CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE 87 

table between two women who were strangers to 
him. Because of his repulsive face the ladies 
asked the steward to assign him elsewhere. When 
the matter was brought to Mr. Brewster's atten- 
tion he took no offense, but asked to be permitted 
to remain for a day, and, then, if they still desired 
it, he would change his seat. He was introduced 
to the ladies, and so charming was his personality, 
and so brilliant his conversation, and so fas- 
cinating his spirit and gallantry, that the women 
begged the steward to permit him to remain. 

It is recorded of our Lord on the Transfiguration 
Mountain that '^as he prayed the fashion of his 
countenance was changed, and his raiment was 
white and glistening. '' In the sheltered recesses 
of some mountaintop in the uplands of God we 
may commune with oiir transfigured Christ until 
the fashion of our countenance shall be changed 
into increasing likeness with him whose ^'visage 
was marred more than any man.'' 

A master artist of the Christian school 

Held all his pupils to this lofty rule: 

"Who sketches Mary, Christ, a child, or saint, 

Must hve above reproach, and free from taint." 

One day there came a youth of noble name 
(But sin's dark visage shadowed now his fame) 
And begged the master give him place and time 
To purge away the blackness of his crime. 

The master asked if he the rule did know, 
And would he bide it. Bowing very low. 
While crimson blushes showed his direful guilt, 
The novice said, "It shall be as thou wilt," 



88 A MAN'S REACH 

"Then sketch this face!" was all the artist said, 
And placed before him guilty Judas' head. 
Appalled by what the master there had wrought, 
The pupil stood with troubled mien and thought. 

That night the master, reading, found this truth: 
"Things often seen will change the life in youth; 
And what we most admire will often be 
The very thing to shape our destiny." 

"My rule is wrong!" the teacher slowly mused; 
"I'll change my plan, my pupil I've abused!" 
So when, next day, the pupil took his place, 
Instead of Judas', there was Jesus' face. 

He could not Uft his brush, but stood abashed 
Before the matchless love that canvas flashed. 
Day after day he pondered o'er its art, 
Till that sweet love of Christ had won his heart. 

-/. B. Slocum. 

If we humbly and faithfully follow our Lord by 
Galilee's waves and Judaea's mountains, we shall 
not only abundantly live, but we shall be rap- 
turously satisfied when we ^ 'awake in his likeness." 



VI . 
THE CURE OF DOUBT 



89 



But the gods are dead — 
Ay, Zeus is dead, and all the gods but Doubt, 
And Doubt is brother devil of Despair. 

— John Boyle O^Reilly. 

Our doubts are traitors, 
And make us lose the good we oft might win 
By fearing to attempt. 

— Shakespeare. 

Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and be- 
hold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into 
my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas an- 
swered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith 
unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast be- 
lieved: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. 
— New Testament. 



90 



CHAPTER VI 
THE CURE OF DOUBT 

The oldest and quaintest and most picturesque 
of all the books of the Bible is the book of Job. 
It was fifteen hundred years old when Bethlehem's 
star twinkled over the hills of Judaea, and is re- 
plete with practical lessons, sturdy doctrines, 
Kmpid poetry, and unusual literary excellence. 
It takes rank with the world's greatest epics. 
James Anthony Froude says: ^^An extraordinary 
book of which it is to say little to call it unequaled 
of its kind, and which will one day, when it is al- 
lowed to stand on its own merits, be seen towering 
up alone, far away above the poetry of the world." 

And Thomas Carlyle's admiration is expressed 
in notable words: ^'I call the book of Job, apart 
from all theories about it, one of the grandest 
things ever written with pen. A noble book, all 
men's book. It is our first, oldest statement of 
the never-ending problem: Man's destiny and 
God's ways with him here in this earth. Such 
living likenesses were never since drawn. Sub- 
lime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral 
melody as of the heart of mankind — so soft and 
great — as the summer midnight, as the world 
with its seas and stars. There is nothing written 
in the Bible or out of it of equal literary merit." 

91 



92 A MAN'S REACH 

With sympathetic and entrancing interest we 
follow Job in his sore trials; and observe how, 
notwithstanding his cold comforters — Eliphaz, Bil- 
dad, and Zophar — he remains loyal to the Hand 
which had afflicted him. 

Job in his bewilderment challenges the good- 
ness and mercy of God; and at one time endeavors 
to set his human judgment over against God's 
divine dealings with him; whereupon the heav- 
enly Father spoke to him out of the whirlwind, 
saying: ^^Gird up thy loins like a man, for I will 
demand of thee, and answerest thou me: . . . 
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades 
or loose the bands of Orion?" 

Astronomy is the oldest of the sciences. It is 
God's best worn textbook. 

Devotion! daughter of Astronomy. 
An undevout astronomer is mad. 

The Pleiades form the most dazzhngly beautiful 
of all the constellations, and were supposed by the 
ancients to control the vernal seasons. It was 
confldently believed that the seven stars were 
seven sisters, and only six stars now appear be- 
cause one of the sisters hid herself with shame 
because she had married a mortal, when all the 
other sisters had married deities. The Pleiades 
are four thousand million miles from the earth. 
Alcyone, the most distant star of the constellation, 
is said to be the center of the universe around 
which all celestial bodies revolve with unerring 



THE CURE OF DOUBT 93 

precision and in increasingly glorious pro- 
cession. 

Orion, according to a romantic legend, is a 
doughty giant, who with long strides once went 
ruthlessly through the skies, until at length, with 
a band of three stars, he was pinned a prisoner 
to his place. 

God, in this startling question, sought to teach 
Job that if he could not ''bind the sweet influences 
of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion,'' he 
could not hope to fathom the mysterious designs 
and purposes of Almighty God in his dealings 
with man. Humility and boldness should appear 
in every enduring human character in perfect 
balance. Too much boldness leads to weakened 
personality, and too much humility ''has de- 
pressed many a genius into a hermit." On the 
other hand, as Ruskin says, "Conceit may puff a 
man up, but it can never prop him up." A bold 
humility and a humble boldness should be united 
at the nuptial altars of the Most High in every 
human heart, that "no man should think more 
highly of himself than he ought to think." 

The thoughtful man early discovers his limita- 
tions as he compares himself with his environ- 
ment. He notices the trees, that wave their tall 
plumes for a thousand years, the thunderbolt, 
which shakes into ruins man's citadels and tem- 
ples, the earth, which quakes for a few seconds 
and vast cities are entombed, and the sea, which 
opens its throat and ships and islands are swal- 



94 A MAN'S REACH 

lowed out of sight forever. In all knowledge man 
discovers that his goal to-day is the starting 
point for to-morrow. 

The secret of all success is finding our limita- 
tions, and humbly, but zealously, investing in our 
efforts our best endeavor. Charlotte Cushman 
said: '^In my early life I realized that my talent 
was of a limited kind. I therefore resolved that I 
would confine myself within that narrow com- 
pass." And that is the secret of all success. 
People who defy and refuse to recognize their 
limitations will surely reach disaster. Napoleon 
Bonaparte ruthlessly defied all human boundaries. 
He created or crushed kings to suit his whimsical 
caprice. He made kingdoms and empires stepping- 
stones to progress. Intoxicated with power, he 
dreamed of a vassalage which would include 
every throne on the earth. He announced as the 
chief declaration of his creed that God was always 
on the side of the strongest battalions. At length, 
however, his magnificant army fell a prey to the 
severities of a Russian winter. The ghost of 
Moscow followed him to the mud-pits of Water- 
loo; and, later, in the submerging humiliation of 
Saint Helena exile, he confessed, "I have sinned 
against the ideas of the century and have lost.'' 

Let us not waste our time, as did that ambitious 
Macedonian admirer of his king, in the impossible 
task of trying to carve some Mount Athos into a 
bust of Alexander, nor seek to change the channel 
of life's Euphrates. We cannot fight against God, 



THE CURE OF DOUBT 95 

and it is folly to wear our little wings out beating 
against the inexorable bars of immutable truth. 

Agnosticism is utterly illogical and inconsistent. 
The agnostic is a weak coward. In the realm of 
truth or investigation we do not give up the little 
we do know because there is much we do not un- 
derstand. It is, then, the refinement of cowardice 
for men accustomed to seeking after truth to turn 
away from the eternal God and pronounce them- 
selves agnostics because they cannot fathom all 
mystery. "Canst thou by searching find out 
God?'^ is the old and ever new question. Human 
reason alone is insufficient to find out God. 

Dr. George Romanes, after eating husks in the 
far country of agnosticism, returned to the faith 
of his early life, and declared: "We should all be 
pure agnostics so far as reason is concerned; and 
if any of us is to attain to any information, it can 
only be by means of some superadded faculty of 
our minds. Reason is not the only attribute of 
man; nor is it the only faculty which he habitually 
employs for the ascertainment of truth. Moral 
and spiritual faculties are of no less importance 
in their respective spheres even of everyday life; 
faith, trust, taste, etc., are as needful in ascer- 
taining truth as to character, beauty, etc. as is 
reason. No one is entitled to deny the possibility 
of what may be termed an organ of spiritual 
discernment." Again he says: "All first principles 
even of scientific facts are known by intuition and 
not by reason. No one can deny this. Now, if 



96 A MAN^S REACH 

there be a God, the fact is certainly of the nature 
of a first principle — for it must be the first of all 
first principles. No one can dispute this, no one 
can, therefore, dispute the necessary conclusion 
that, if there be a God, he is knowable (if know- 
able at all) by intuition and not by reason." 

Doubt is not indigenous to the twentieth cen- 
tury. It is as old as the human intellect. Bel- 
shazzar the king said to the prophet Daniel, ^^I 
have heard that thou canst make interpretations 
and dissolve doubts. '^ And even after the resur- 
rection of Jesus it is said, ''But some doubted." 
There are captious doubters whose doubts are 
subterfuges for indifference, unfaithfulness, and 
questionable practices. There are constitutional 
doubters who have a question for everything — 
just like Thomas, who said, when Jesus went to 
the tomb of Lazarus, ''Let us go, that we may 
die with him." 

We should wage a tireless warfare against de- 
structive doubt. It is bold, egotistic, parasitic, 
cruel, blasphemous, and Satanic. Doubt obscures 
our star, blurs our chart, deflects our compass, 
breaks our rudder. Doubt destroys our perspec- 
tive and our sense of proportion. It breaks down 
the law of relationship by which man coordinates 
himself with God, the world, and humanity. 
Doubt is pessimism, degeneration, and decay. 

Our doubts are traitors, 
And make us lose the good we oft might win 
By fearing to attempt. 



THE CURE OF DOUBT 97 

The doubter loses faith in himself, and that is 
suicide; he loses faith in God, and that is tragedy; 
and he loses faith in his fellows, and that is misan- 
thropy. To such an one 

All the gods are dead, 

All the gods but doubt, 

And Doubt is brother devil of Despair. 

For right is right since God is God, 

And right the day must win, 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 

To falter would be sin. 

We therefore take prompt exception to the poet 
who says, ''Who never doubted never half be- 
lieved," and to the character in the Inferno, who 
declares, ''Doubting charmed me not less than 
knowledge." Doubt furnishes the soul with 
waxen wings, which, coming too close to the 
brilliant orbs of truth, are melted, and. Icarus- 
like, the poor victim is precipitated into chasms 
of despair and night. After a brilliant California 
poet had taken his own Ufe, at his side were found 
these pitiful and tragical lines: 

Woe worth the knowledge and the bookish lore, 

Of that which was miraculous before, 

And sneers the heart down with the scofl5ng brain. 

Woe worth the peering, analytic days 
That dry the tender juices in the breast, 
And put the thunders of the Lord to test. 

So that no marvel must be, and no praise 
Nor any God except necessity. 

What can ye give my poor, stained life in lieu 

Of that dead cherub which I slew for you? 



98 A MAN'S REACH 

Take back your doubtful wisdom and renew 

My early foolish freshness (of the dunce) 

Whose simple instincts guessed the heavens at once. 

The doubter is to be truly pitied and not derided; 
he is to be helped, not hindered by ridicule. Alas 
that men will not believe their senses nor respond 
to their intuitions! 

What, then, shall we do with our doubts? 
What is the cure of doubt? We should study the 
works and wonders of creation. ^'The heavens 
declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
showeth his handiwork." Even the flowers render 
a fragrant ministry: 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies. 
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower, but, if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is. 

We must not be intimidated by the fact that 
things are incredible. It is the mission of faith to 
help us to believe in the incredible. The universe 
is incredible. The sun and its fires, the plumed 
comets with their stride, the seas with their tide, 
the skies with their stars are all incredible. So is 
God incredible; but so are also love and service 
and fidelity and aspiration and sacrifice incredible 
in beings of such a material origin as men in a 
universe of matter; these are all unbelievable 
things; and yet in them we live and move and 



THE CURE OF DOUBT 99 

have our being. ^'Christ is the most incredible 
Person in history; is there any other in whom it 
is so easy to beheve, whom it is so easy to love?'' 
Zophar was right; we cannot by searching find 
out God. Reason's experiments always fail just 
as lamentably as when the ancients built their 
lofty tower in the Plains of Shinar. The confusion 
of tongues is inevitable when men abjure faith 
and seek to find God under the guidance of reason 
alone. When reason has solved some nearby 
problems it will be time enough to assail the 
Infinite. Let a dogmatic and bumptious reason 
either confess its limitations or tell us where is 
the lost Pleiad? What is the function of the 
spleen? How can we square the circle? Such 
arrogant doubt reminds us of Mrs. Poyser's 
rooster, who imagined the sun arose each morning 
to hear him crow. To believe in God is not a 
''badge of intellectual inferiority," for ''none are 
so poor and needy as those who reject Christianity 
because they think they have outgrown it intel- 
lectually." The honest man will meet his doubts 
with patience and fortitude, and will in the end 
have the triumphant experience of Tennyson, 
who, writing of himself, says. 

He fought his doubts and gathered strength, 
He would not make his judgment bHnd, 
He faced the specters of the mind 

And laid them: thus he came at length 

To find a stronger faith his own. 

Christ is the cure for doubt. As the sun is the 



100 A MAN^S REACH 

cure for darkness, health for disease, and truth 
for error, so is Christ for doubt. 

O, then, if Reason waver at thy side, 
Let humble memory be thy gentle guide, 
Go to thy birthplace, and if faith is there, 
Repeat thy father's creed, thy mother's prayer. 

Cecil tried to be a skeptic, but he could not 
get around his mother's life. John Randolph 
said that but for his mother's prayers and godly 
example he would have been swept into French 
infidelity. And David Hume, in his sane mo- 
ments, said, ''When I think of my mother I 
believe in immortality." 

A godly life is a cure for doubt. Many skeptical 
scientists have found, with Professor Mhegard, of 
the University of Copenhagen, the insufficiency 
of science in the emergencies of life, and have 
adopted his words: ''Full of faith in the suffi- 
ciency of science, I thought to have found it a sure 
refuge from all the contingencies of life. This 
illusion is vanished. When the tempest came 
which plunged me in sorrow, the moorings — the 
cable of science — broke like a thread. Then I 
seized upon the help that many before me had 
laid hold of. I sought and found peace in God. 
Since then I have certainly not abandoned science, 
but I have assigned it to another place in my 
life.'' 

Heine, the great German physician and phil- 
osopher, had an almost identical experience. After 
many years of widely proclaimed unbelief, he says : 



THE CURE OF DOUBT 101 

''The divine homesickness came upon me; I rushed 
to my room, closed the door, and fell upon my 
knees and prayed for strength and courage and joy. 
I am now happy with my God. Prayer hath done 
this.'' And so have many great men worked 
themselves through the mazes of bewildering 
doubt: Augustine, Neander, Tholuck; Schleier- 
macher, the German philosopher; Thomas Cooper, 
the noted chartist of England; and many others. 

Patience and prayer will drive away the lower- 
ing fogs of doubt, and let in the glowing effulgence 
of the orbs of truth. Doubt should not be con- 
founded with demonstrated truth; it is merely an 
interrogation point beckoning us into fields of 
honest investigation, or it is a guideboard point- 
ing us to the true path of light. 

Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Faith 
is not ''the cardinal sin of science" and it is the 
cardinal virtue of the thoughtful mind. God 
meets the humble, holy, inquiring man at the 
boundary of his limitations, and reveals to him 
the enchanting glories of the Infinite. In our 
limitations lie our supreme chance. If in our 
doubt and timidity and little faith we may ven- 
ture to touch even the hem of the garment of our 
Lord we shall be loosed from all the infirmities of 
unbelief and be made perfectly whole. 

"Lord, I beUeve, help thou my imbehef." 



VII 
MONEY 



v^ 



He that is proud of riches is a fool. For if he be exalted 
above his neighbors because he hath more gold, how much 
inferior is he to a gold mine! — Jeremy Taylor. 

The ideal social state is not that in which each gets one equal 
amount of wealth, but in which each gets in proportion to his 
contribution to the general stock. — Henry George. 

If thou art rich, thou art poor; 

For like an ass with ingots bows, 

Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, 

And death unloads thee. 

— Shakespeare. 



104 



CHAPTER VII 
MONEY 

"Godliness is profitable unto all things/' The 
compensation of finding true wisdom is that the 
fair goddess holds out to the fortunate seeker in 
her right hand "length of days,'' and in the left 
hand "riches and honor." The industry and 
genius to get money is God-given, but money, 
like all gifts, is frequently misused to man's great 
disaster. God gives to man great talents as in- 
struments with which to work out his salvation 
and the salvation of his fellows; but not infre- 
quently man prostitutes his endowments to selfish 
and unholy ends; and what might have been the 
means of his exaltation becomes the cause of his 
humiliation and undoing. 

Money is opportunity. Money is time, as well 
as time money. Not only can it remove obstacles, 
but it can purchase privilege and open multi- 
plying doors. "Money alone sets all the world in 
motion." Money makes the world go. It can 
be the world's supreme blessing or its most colos- 
sal woe. Money may bring culture, power, and 
character; but a man may have all of these and 
but little money. Money makes possible all great 
schemes for the amelioration of mankind. It is 
within the power of money to give peace instead 



106 A MAN'S REACH 

of worry, health instead of disease, culture instead 
of ignorance, prosperity instead of adversity, com- 
fort instead of disquietude, and plenty instead of 
penury. Money is the method by which the skill 
of hand and heart and brain is exchanged for the 
commodities and luxuries of Uving. 

Money is not tainted any more than time is 
tainted, but man's defiling touch may discredit 
money and dishonor time. Money is not the root 
of all evil, but it is the tap-root of nearly all 
temporal prosperity. It is the avaricious love of 
money which is the root of all evil. No man will 
make much out of life unless he first learns the 
value of money. 

Money is obligation; it is the measure of man's 
duty to his fellows. To the unjust and selfish use 
of money is largely due the confused and unhappy 
social condition of to-day. The Bishop of London, 
while on a visit some time since to the United 
States, said, ''The more bitter and blatant forms 
of socialism spring from the neglect of the prin- 
ciple of stewardship inherent in the Christian 
religion." Money is not a man's because he was 
the fortunate Sutter who discovered the gold 
mine. Sutter did not make it — God made it. 
Let man have his full mead of praise and equitable 
share of the profits, but God put it there for all 
mankind. Helen Gould Shepard was a wise 
little woman when she said: ''There is one obliga- 
tion which rests upon all persons rich and poor — 
to use wisely the gifts which God has granted us. 



MONEY 107 

Wealth is an undoubted aid in bringing about the 
happiness of the unfortunate. Our greatest pleas- 
ure will be found in acts of charity." 

Charity is good, but to willingly siu-render our 
surplus wealth for the benefit of all is best. It is 
not the poor alone who have a right to the exces- 
sive wealth of the rich, but the masses also. 
Herein lies the justice of the income tax, for some 
men will not willingly permit themselves to be 
parted from their money. It is what a man gives 
away which blesses him more than what he keeps. 
The equal distribution of wealth is a great problem 
for wise statesmen and true philanthropists. 

There are some things that money cannot buy. 
It is reported that Andrew Carnegie will give 
$100,000 to anyone who helps him to keep on 
living. A Mexican millionaire offers a million 
dollars to anyone who will cure him of leprosy; 
a Frenchman the same sum for a cure for tubercu- 
losis; and a New York man will give a fabulous 
amount to anyone who will restore his failing 
sight. The last hours of the daughter of John D. 
Rockefeller were filled with anxious care because 
she feared, if she recovered, she would be com- 
pelled to live in poverty. Tragic irony of fate ! 

Money can buy wigs, but it cannot make hair 
grow on bald heads. I once dined at the home of 
a very rich man. The table groaned with all the 
delicacies of many climes, but my host told me 
that some years previously he had lost his sense 
of taste. Pickles and pumpkins, salads and sue- 



108 A MAN'S REACH 

cotash, turkey and turnips, dressings and desserts, 
all tasted alike to him. And so some people are 
color blind, and others cannot enjoy the odor of 
orange blossoms and honeysuckles; and all the 
wealth of Croesus cannot restore to them the 
sense of smell and sight. Money cannot buy 
character. ^^He that trusteth in his riches shall 
fall.'' ^'A good name is rather to be chosen than 
great riches." Money alone cannot purchase true 
happiness. Montesquieu said, '^Men slave to 
make a fortune only to be in despair after they 
have made it that they are not highborn." Money 
alone never can and never will make anyone 
happy. It may lessen burdens in one way, but it 
multiplies care in many other directions. Gold- 
smith, in ^'The Deserted Village," sings, 

His best companions innocence and health, 
And his best riches ignorance of wealth. 

It is said of the young ruler, "He went away 
sorrowful, for he was very rich." 

Can wealth give happiness? look around and see: 
What gay distress! What splendid misery! 

There is an old sixteenth-century proverb which 

says, 

A Httle house well filled, 
A little field weU tilled, 
A little wife well willed 
Are great riches. 

Have you heard of that pompous Chicago pork- 
packer whom Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts, pub- 
licly named in the Senate, whose son, unfor- 



MONEY 109 

tunately, from his father's point of view, developed 
a fondness for books, and who, in an unguarded 
moment, was permitted by his father to go abroad 
and study at a foreign university? Suddenly he 
summoned his son home, and was asked why the 
young man had been called back. ''O," he re- 
plied, ^'I let him go abroad for a while. He 
wanted to write a book. But he has got some- 
thing better to do than that. I can hire men to 
write books, but he has got a big packing business 
the like of which is not in the world. He can't 
waste time in studying and writing books." 

If life were a boon that money could buy, 
The rich would live and the poor would die. 

A rich man was asked, ''When is a man rich 
enough — when he has ten thousand dollars?" 
''No," he answered. "WTien he has a hundred 
thousand?" "No," he replied. "When he has a 
million?" "No," he still answered, and, con- 
tinuing, said, "When he has a little more than 
he has got, and that is never." "Riches," said a 
philosopher, "are like sea water — the more you 
drink the thirstier you become." 

Nelson O. Nelson, a Saint Louis millionaire, 
not long since, said some remarkable things about 
wealth. He declared that getting rich was "a 
bad habit." And then presents this somewhat 
harrowing picture of riches: "As a man's wealth 
increases his cares increase in the same ratio. 
The compensations of wealth are comparatively 



110 A MAN'S REACH 

few. Money can buy everything but happiness. 
The rich man's palace is full of everything but 
happiness — it lacks nothing but happiness. He 
has become so steeped in the idea of accumulating 
and ever accumulating wealth that he has lost 
the heart to respond. The children of the rich 
are not ordinarily a comfort or a happiness to 
them. This may be a dreary picture," Mr. 
Nelson concludes, ^^but I think it is true of the 
average mere money-getter." Alas! he starts out 
as a money-getter, and after a while money gets 
him and happiness is gone. Men seem to go 
money-mad. They are seized with an inglorious 
mania. They become impatient with any normal 
increase of values, and want to gallop quickly to 
the goal. Their motto is 

Get wealth and place, if possible, with grace; 
If not, by any means get wealth and place. 

Or they adopt the attitude of the avaricious old 
Quaker, who said, ^^My son, get money, honestly 
if thou canst, but get money." 

Washington Irving referred to ^^the Almighty 
Dollar, that great object of universal worship 
throughout the land." Men want money be- 
cause they see that money seems to cover a mul- 
titude of sins. Rich men who are ignorant and 
coarse and vulgar and wicked and selfish are 
often tolerated and pampered and feted and even 
honored. If it were not for their money, they 
would be deservedly ostracized and ignored. 



MONEY 111 

Nothing is more sickening than the cringing 
sycophancy of some obsequious flatterers toward 
the rich. 

Money is not always a token of virtue and 
honesty. That a man is prosperous is not sure 
evidence that he is honorable. So much is this 
the case to-day that when a man is said to be 
rich a calculating public asks, 'Where did he get 
it?'' In these days of systematic and diabolical 
grafting almost any man can get riches if he is 
willing to throw his conscience and Christian 
ideals overboard. We must remember that virtue 
is not always rewarded with riches, or even plenty, 
and vice is not always promptly punished. Suc- 
cessful men are not always good men. As Ches- 
terton says: ''When once people have begun to 
beheve that prosperity is always the reward of 
virtue, their next calamity is obvious. Prosperity 
will be regarded as a symptom of virtue. Men 
will leave off the task of making good men suc- 
cessful and adopt the easier task of making out 
that successful men are good.'' It may also be 
true, as Machiavelli says, that "virtue and riches 
seldom settle on one man." 

It would seem from the mad pace, and the 
wasteful extravagance, and the vulgar encroach- 
ments upon the recognized proprieties, and the 
enervating and dissipating indulgences, and the 
bold indifference to all the simple laws of health 
and safety and morals and justice, and arrogant 
defiance of God and all high and holy obhgations, 



in A MAN^S REACH 

that Dr. Felix Adler was right when he said not 
long since, '^The very rich are insane." Men do 
seem to get a mental and moral obliquity toward 
wealth which unfits them for all the normal 
duties and joys of human life. They take a swift 
toboggan, and are held up in their frenzied flight 
by the voice of God, which says, ^'Thou fool, this 
night thy soul shall be required of thee." 

Before the Civil War an ardent Southerner 
earnestly advocated the freedom of the Negro, 
because, he said, slavery not only hurt the black 
people, but it was ruining the white people. So 
there has grown up in our land a real menace in 
the shape of the idle rich, for the rich themselves 
have become the most tragic victims of their own 
wealth. It is a calamity often to be poor, but it 
is more often a direful calamity to be rich. It is 
to be hoped that the recent magazine writer, who 
claims to belong to the circle of the very rich, is 
correct when he argues that there is the "Passing 
of the Idle Rich." The idle and extravagant and 
heartless and penurious idle rich have had much 
to do with the creation of the dynamite-bomb 
anarchist, for whenever there is wasteful and 
cruel improvidence at one end of the social scale 
there will be rebellious poverty and discontent at 
the other end which is likely to express itself in 
direful and avenging protest. 

Men must not only give an account to God 
at the Judgment, but they must give an account 
to their fellow men while they live. Franklin 



MONEY 113 

asked, "If your riches are yours, why don't you 
take them with you to the other world?" And 
Jeremiah said, '^As the partridge sitteth on eggs, 
and hatcheth them not, so he that getteth riches, 
and not by right, shall leave them in the midst 
of his days, and at his end shall be a fool." 

Men cannot any longer retain their self-respect 
and hoard their wealth. The miser is the most 
unhappy and despicable of all men — notice we 
get our word '^miserable" from him. Carnegie 
declares that it is immoral for a man to die 
rich. I would not use the word "immoral," but 
"unmoral." The poor-rich are most pitiable folk 
indeed. Joaquin Miller expressed his profound 
sympathy for the "Dead Millionaire" in the 
words : 

The gold that in the sunshine lies 

In bursting heaps at dawn; 
The silver pouring from the skies 

At night to walk upon; 
The diamonds gleaming in the dew, 

He never saw, he never knew. 

Another poet-painter once said of a coarse 
rich man, "When the sun rises you see something 
like a golden guinea coming out of the sea, while 
I see and hear likewise something like an in- 
visible company of angels praising God." 

Money is useful only as we give it away and 
transmute it into things and thoughts and deeds. 
It is nothing in itself. We might have a bank's 
safe full of money, but it would not quench our 
thirst nor satisfy our hunger unless it was ex- 



114 A MAN^S REACH 

changed for pure water and wholesome food. As 
one writer truthfully says: 'The love of money 
has been in all ages one of the passions that has 
given great disturbance to the tranquillity of the 
world/ ^ Yes, but, on the other hand, the right 
use of money has powerful resources for peace 
and prosperity. 

Some people have sought to enforce the duty 
and doctrine of contempt for wealth, but the cult 
does not rapidly increase because the average 
man imagines if he could become the custodian 
of wealth he would certainly use it to purchase 
privileges for his needy neighbors. But, alas, what 
weaknesses in human nature wealth discovers 
in its possessors! I have known men who were 
useful and inspirational members of society when 
they were poor to become vulgar and bumptious 
and arrogant and utterly useless to God and 
humanity when they acquired wealth. As Shake- 
speare says : 

How quickly nature falls into revolt 
When gold becomes her object! 

We should thoughtfully consider the wise re- 
marks of Dr. Samuel Johnson: ''When, therefore, 
the desire of wealth is taking hold of the heart, 
let us look round and see how it operates upon 
those whose industry or fortune has obtained it. 
When we find them oppressed with their own 
abundance, luxurious without pleasure, idle with- 
out ease, impatient and querulous in themselves, 
and despised or hated by the rest of mankind, we 



MONEY 115 

shall soon be convinced that if the real wants of 
our condition are satisfied there remains little to 
be sought with solicitude or desired with eager- 
ness." Is it not a remarkable fact that our chief 
happiness comes from satisfying the ''real wants'' 
of life, and in responding to those sublimest im- 
pulses which spring out of simplicity, sincerity, 
and humility? Riches change all of this natural 
order, and fill our lives with artificiality and 
abnormality. 
The Chinese have an old proverb: 

Shall I, grasping, gather wealth and breed it — 

For my children jealously conserve it? 

If my sons surpass me, they won't need it; 

If they don't, why, then, they won't deserve it. 

The following advertisement appeared in the 
London Times recently: "To the Rich — Gentle- 
man, 27, good-looking, six feet, very musical, 
artistic, good voice, sportsman, whose life since 
the age of 17 has been a lonely struggle for the 
bare necessaries against insistent ill luck and dis- 
appointment, asks of some one who may take an 
interest, and who would not even miss them, the 
means to give him one year of full, real life, to see 
the beautiful places and things in the world, and 
have funds carte blanche to gratify his own tastes, 
and taste the happiness that money gives and 
realizes." 

I suppose everyone longs now and then for the 
opportunities which money could bring, but not 
many of us stop to consider the discontent and 



116 A MAN'S REACH 

surfeit and burdensome and aimless leisure and 
anxiety which usually accompany it. I am sorry 
for the fellow who inserts the advertisement, but 
it is not at all certain that he would be satisfied 
if his dreams could be fulfilled. 

If money made the birds sing any sweeter, 

Or made the skies a brighter, better blue; 
If money made a summer day completer, 

Or added to the sunset's gorgeous view; 
If money made a meadow more entrancing, 

A shady lane a better place to stroll; 
If gold could add one bit to my romancing. 

On money then I'd strive to feed my soul. 

But money never has wrought this entrancing 
transformation, and it never will. Supreme hap- 
piness is not a rich nugget found free in easy en- 
deavor; it is always imprisoned in the hard quartz 
of service and duty. He who seeks for happiness 
alone will never find it, but he who seeks to be 
useful will find happiness at every turn. 

There is a thrilling story that a Persian army 
was once led to victory by a brave blacksmith 
who wore his leather apron. That apron became 
afterward the army's standard, and was at length 
completely covered with rare and brilliant jewels. 
"But as the sign of toil was hidden beneath the 
blaze of wealth defeat followed upon defeat." 
So true happiness and victory come with con- 
tinuous and painstaking and conscientious en- 
deavor. Riches encourage enervating ease. Men 
trust in money rather than in their own right arm, 
and have faith in riches rather than in God, and 



MONEY 117 

joyous victories are soon turned into ignominious 
defeats. 

Yes, the only right and safe use of money is to 
give it away. Life is too short to mistake money 
for manhood. Seven multi-milhonaires and a 
group of humble deck-hands and stokers and a 
few unnamed musicians all went down with the 
Titanic 's unsinkable craft — into the democracy of 
death. When men come to die they are on the 
same level. A story is told of Henry Thornton. 
In response to the appeal of a visitor, he had just 
handed over a check for twenty-five dollars for 
missions. The ink was hardly dry when a tele- 
gram was delivered to him, and he turned pale 
and trembled as he read. He said, ''Give me 
back that check; I have just received the terrible 
news that I have lost thousands of dollars." Of 
course, it might have been expected that the 
check would be canceled; but, instead, Mr. 
Thornton wrote another check for five hundred 
dollars, and, handing it to the surprised visitor, 
said, ''God has taught me that I may not much 
longer possess my property and that I must use it 
well." What a joy it must be to have money and 
to give it away to those who need it ! Never have 
such vast fortunes been poured into the lap of 
humanity as are being offered to-day. Libraries 
and colleges and art and science and hospitals 
and eleemosynary institutions — all are being richly 
endowed and sustained by the generous offerings 
of wealthy patrons. 



118 A MAN^S REACH 

When the nations of the past have indulged in 
extreme luxury, and at the same time have per- 
mitted extreme poverty, their decline has been 
hastened. It is only when a safe equilibrium is 
maintained that nations have been able to per- 
petuate themselves. When the riches of the 
wealthy are exchanged for the wisdom of the 
poor, nations have steadily advanced, but when 
the rich exploit and neglect the poor, and people 
riot in ostentation and extravagance and gluttony 
and intemperance and impurity, then the strong- 
est governments rapidly decline and at length 
become a pathetic memory. In the days of 
Roman disintegration the condition was so de- 
plorable that the poor would starve if an Alexan- 
drian corn ship was delayed, while the rich were 
squandering immense fortunes on a single feast, 
and banqueting on the brains of peacocks and 
pheasants, and the tongues of nightingales and 
parrots brought at great expense from distant 
provinces; and all this while the multitudinous 
poor were dying of sheer starvation. 

All excessive wealth belongs not to those who 
have acquired it, but to those who need it; and 
some day, unless freely given, the government 
will confiscate great fortunes for the benefit of 
society, just as to-day it condemns for public use 
certain desirable properties in the exercise of its 
right of eminent domain. The happiness and 
perpetuity of a nation depend upon the proper 
distribution of its surplus wealth. Those are the 



MONEY 119 

securest and happiest nations whose working peo- 
ple are busy in the production of useful things, 
and whose well-to-do citizens voluntarily share 
with those less fortunate their increasing pros- 
perity. 

I was remarkably impressed with the statement 
made to me in conversation by a leading Los 
Angeles banker. I give it to you as the deliberate 
thought of an expert on the subject of money. 
There is in his words much food for reflection. He 
said: ^^The world's estimate of success, measured 
by the accumulation of wealth, is a false one, and 
when thoroughly understood will be changed. 
One of the costs of riches may be said to be the 
destruction of one's own family. Mental, as well 
as physical, strength can be attained only through 
individual exercise. It can neither be bought nor 
stolen. The price must be paid by everyone who 
attains it through personal exertion. The incen- 
tive of the rich man's family to do is not so great 
as that of the poor man's. The rich man's son 
has not so good an opportunity to succeed in life 
as has the poor man's; hence the truth of the 
saying, 'It is three generations between shirt 
sleeves and shirt sleeves.' Enumerate the things 
that are worth while in Hfe, the things that en- 
dure; not one of them can be bought with money, 
while the things that can be bought with money 
tend to weaken and destroy rather than to build 
up and make strong." In spite of these immutable 
truths there are some millionaire monsters. 



120 A MAN'S REACH 

When I refer to millionaire monsters I do not 
wish to be understood as inveighing against a 
man simply because a combination of fortunate 
circumstances has made it possible for him to 
amass a fortune. There are many men who have 
become millionaires who have continued to be 
humble, honest, hberal men, and have dispensed 
their large gifts to the blessing of humanity about 
them. In consequence of this wise generosity 
there are hospitals and libraries and churches and 
schools all over this land which are the results of 
the discriminatory benefactions of wealthy men. 
There are, however, men of vast means who have 
used their fortunes in selfish indulgence, and have 
acquired their great wealth by dishonorable meth- 
ods; they have become increasingly close and 
penurious, and have direfully oppressed labor and 
tragically indulged in excessive immoralities. 

Among these millionaire monsters are the men 
who are increasing their ill-gotten fortunes by 
grinding out the lives of innocent and helpless 
childhood. One of the infamies of our age is that 
we have permitted men for money gain to employ 
little children — mere babies — from six years of 
age and over, in the great factories of this coun- 
try. Herod, in his slaughter of the innocent 
children of Bethlehem, gained for himself the 
most ignominious place in New Testament his- 
tory; but Herod is out-Heroded by the blood- 
thirsty monsters of our day who, against the 
protest of the nation, continue to earn enormous 



MONEY 121 

dividends at the expense of the sweet Hves of 
beautiful children. The protest of the people 
should be more earnest and the laws more pro- 
hibitive and drastic, until these cruel monstrosities 
shall be impossible in the land of the free and the 
home of the brave. 

O these baby slaves, so fragile! 
Dull they look, and yet so agile; 
Spindles, spindles ever flying; 
Broken threads forever tying. 
They see spindles — nothing more; 
They hear nothing but the roar 
And the whirling of the loom: 
This, their world, this stifling room. 
God in heaven! Can this be 
In a land of liberty? 

Above the din and roar of spindles and looms 
you can hear the sob of these children as they 
are crying for friends to emancipate them. Let 
us be among those who will go quickly to their 
relief. 

There are other millionaire monsters among us 
who, at the lowest possible wage, are employing 
vast armies of women — women and girls who are 
dependent, or have aged parents, or invalid hus- 
bands; or young widows with little children to 
support; and these girls and women must go out 
into the big world to earn a living for themselves 
and those dependent upon them. The wage 
which they are compelled to accept or starve 
scarcely keeps them from want, and drives many 
of them into "the easier way," where, before long. 



122 A MAN^S REACH 

their souls and bodies are submerged in the swell- 
ing tides of vice and impurity. Men monsters 
may deny it with heartless zeal, but there is just 
as close a relationship between "wages and 
wickedness' ' as there is between "wages and 
righteousness." Just as a sufficient wage makes 
cozy homes, contented hearts, manly endeavor, 
and well-poised virtue, so does a starvation wage 
drive girls and women into questionable associa- 
tions, where for liberal money consideration they 
compromise their honor and blast their lives. 
When a starvation wage drives a girl to the poor- 
house door, and gives her rags for raiment and 
hunger for food, who is responsible if, in the hour 
of humiliation and woe and loneliness, she, being 
assailed by the tempter, should not have the 
power to say, "Get thee behind me, Satan"? The 
Bloody Bluebeards who have grown rich at the 
expense of the labor of underpaid women should 
be made to answer now at the bar of justice as 
they will be compelled to give an account some 
day at the Judgment Seat of God for their mon- 
strous oppression. I have heard of a Los Angeles 
millionaire whose riches have steadily increased, 
and who sometimes gives considerable sums to 
philanthropy, who blocks every effort made by 
his associates to increase the salaries of the men 
in their employ. 

Not long since, a successful business man said: 
"Recently I saw a letter from a millionaire re- 
ferring to the death of a clerk who had served 



MONEY 123 

him faithfully thirty years. The man who wrote 
this letter is rated at twenty million dollars. In 
this letter, after disposing of several matters, he 
refers to the death of his old employee incidentally, 
and directed that the exact date of the severance 
of his connection with the office because of his 
last illness be ascertained, exact amount due him 
for the fraction of the month he had worked be 
figured up, and a check for the amount be mailed 
to his widow. Do you imagine that old cur- 
mudgeon has a soul? I would like to acquire mil- 
lions, but if the process is going to make me like 
some of the old devils I know who are millionaires, 
I don't want the money." Is it not lamentable 
beyond expression that men can become so greedy 
to get money that at length their money gets 
them, and they become at last the avaricious 
serfs of a power which as completely controls them 
as if they were the abject slaves of the liquor or 
the drug habit? Poor, miserable monsters! 

"How much did he leave?" asked a man when 
a millionaire died. "Every penny," a neighbor 
solemnly replied. 

What shall be said of those millionaire mon- 
sters who, like deadly boa constrictors, set them- 
selves about the devilish business of inveigling 
and ensnaring young girls? When William T. 
Stead, a few years ago, was cast into prison in 
England because he dared expose the details of a 
traffic in young girls which was being carried on 
in Great Britain by rich men aided by human 



124 A MAN'S REACH 

devils, mostly depraved women, we, here in 
America, composed ourselves with the com- 
forting assurance that such bestial depravities 
belonged to the royal families of an effete mon- 
archical system; but we have been suddenly 
awakened from our dreams by the astounding 
fact that in our own country atrocities of the 
most heinous nature are being daily enacted. If 
some things that are being circulated concerning 
certain monster millionaires could be proven, and 
if a poor victimized girlhood could be emboldened 
to tell what they know, I tell you there are some 
rich devils in this country who would spend long 
terms in penitentiaries and prisons. 

When, a few years ago, in New York city, a 
rich man's son took the life of a man as worthless 
as himself he was adjudged insane and sent to an 
asylum. But tell me why, when disgrace and 
dishonor are worse to a woman than kindly death, 
that a man, when he has ruined not only one, but 
many beautiful young and innocent lives, shall 
be permitted to have his freedom and like a 
beast of prey continue his depredations of im- 
purity. It is a pity that these poor victims of 
men's depravity have not valiant brothers who 
could avenge the crimes of these venomous de- 
spoilers of America's sweet girlhood. It is to be 
hoped that the law will be able to get many of 
these loathsome millionaire monsters. 

It is said that a rich man of a beautiful suburb 
of Los Angeles, whose multiplied millions have 



MONEY 125 

been acquired in the infernal business of making 
many American citizens abject drunkards, gave 
his wife at the fiftieth anniversary of their mar- 
riage a crown of gold and diamonds of fabulous 
value, worth two hundred thousand dollars at 
least. Think of the crowns of thorns that same 
business has woven for the heads and hearts of an 
afflicted nation, cursed and enslaved by the hor- 
rible rum traffic. This is what I mean by mil- 
lionaire monsters. When a rich brewer dies it 
would be most suggestive if, by some irony of 
fate, his monument could consist of a huge 
granite shaft at least five hundred feet high, 
which should be a warning to a city and a State 
and a nation because the monument was in the 
shape of a huge beer bottle. 

''Which would you rather be, boys, the rich 
man or Lazarus?" asked a teacher of his class. 
One boy replied, "I should like to be the rich 
man while I live, and Lazarus when I die." 

It is a good omen when Collier's Weekly had the 
courage to say recently: ''There are a good many 
sad things about our civilization, but few more 
discouraging than the fact that in Baltimore and 
Louisville men who make whisky, and use all 
the arts of trade to stimulate its consumption, are 
able, by virtue of their money, to escape the 
odium w^hich attaches to all others, like gamblers 
and panders, who stimulate crime and profit by 
exploiting human weakness." The nation has 
been phenomenally patient in enduring the de- 



126 A MAN'S REACH 

spoliation of the infamous liquor traffic, and some 
of us will live to see the end of this monstrous and 
inhuman warfare against the souls and bodies, the 
homes, the happiness, and the health of our nation. 
On the last afternoon of the old year of 1886 a 
young business man of New York city, as he was 
leaving his store, was handed a memorandum 
by his bookkeeper showing his profits for the 
year just closing. He placed it in his pocket with- 
out reading it. He had arranged to spend the 
last hours of the old year with some convivial 
friends, as he had done in former years. On his 
way to meet his evening engagement he chanced 
to remember the memorandum, and, taking it 
out of his pocket, by the light of a street lamp 
he was astonished to find how large had been his 
profits for the year just ending. The size of the 
amount startled him into a consciousness of his 
obligation. He had reached a crisis in his life 
as he stood that night under a lamp-post at the 
parting of the ways. He hesitated a moment, 
and then, instead of joining jovial friends for a 
night of dissipation, he turned his steps toward a 
humble place of worship, where some devoted 
Methodists were holding a watch-night service. 
There he found his mother kneeling at an altar 
praying for her boy, and he went up and knelt 
beside her, and with penitent soul poured out 
his petitions for pardon; and God forgave him, 
and a Saul of Tarsus in the mercantile world 
went forth to bless humanity. His business 



MONEY 127 

prosperity increased, and he not only honestly 
tithed his income, but he gave multiplied thou- 
sands in addition. His benefactions were en- 
thusiastically bestowed upon the outcasts of a 
great city, and armies of needy people have 
spoken the name of John S. Huyler with grateful 
hearts. He told his pastor, Dr. C. L. Goodell, 
that all of his gifts to philanthropy were charged 
up to what he called his ''M. P. account," and he 
said the mystic symbols stood for ^'My Partner." 
He had taken Jesus Christ into his business life, 
and gladly gave away his large profits for the 
benefit of those for whom Christ died; and when 
he appeared at the gate of heaven he was rated 
as a milhonaire in the cashbook of the skies, and 
no doubt admitted to a worthy place in the 
gloryland; because when a man dies he is worth 
only what he has given away. 



VIII 
EVERY MAN A PENNY 



129 



Plow deep while sluggards sleep. — Beniamin Franklin. 

Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die. 
Emerson. 

Labor stands on golden feet. — Old Adage. 

No man is born into the world whose work 
Is not born with him; there is always work 
And tools to work withal, for those who will; 
And blessed are the horny hands of toil. 

— Lowell. 



130 



CHAPTER VIII 
EVERY MAN A PENNY 

When the young ruler had departed from Jesus 
with sorrowful spirit because the Master's answer 
to the question, ''What shall I do?'' was ''Go 
and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and 
come and follow me," Peter, with characteristic 
impulsiveness, approaching Jesus, said, with a 
touch of vanity and an air of self-worthiness, 
"Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; 
what shall we have therefore?" Our Lord seized 
upon these two incidents as presenting a good 
opportunity to enunciate two deep basal prin- 
ciples of the kingdom of heaven; and delivered 
the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. 

These two inquirers had mistaken the nature 
of the kingdom. The young synagogue official 
supposed that there was someting he might do 
that he might merit eternal life, as if everlasting 
life could be secured by some act of ostentatious 
devotion. Peter blundered in another direction. 
In reply to the Master's command about giving 
up all, he ventured to inquire what he and the 
other disciples should have as reward for their 
self-abnegation. Christ thereupon emphasizes by 
gentle instruction the great fact that the kingdom 
of heaven on earth is entered not by doing or 
having, but by believing — by faith. 

131 



132 A MAN'S REACH 

Jesus, on another occasion, when he was asked, 
'What shall we do that we might work the 
works of God?" answered, "This is the work of 
God, that ye believe on him whom he hath 
sent." Faith, then, is works. Paul caught the 
Master's meaning when he writes, "Therefore 
being justified by faith"; and the truth flashed 
upon Luther, when, ascending the steps of the 
Lateran on his knees, he suddenly arose to his 
feet and cried out, "The just shall live by faith!" 

The entrance to the kingdom of heaven is not 
by works, for the one-hour toilers in the vine- 
yard received a denarius of the same value as 
those who had wrought the entire twelve hours. 
The important lesson is that it is not what man 
does that merits him heaven, but what he be- 
lieves. The towers of Babel of either ancient or 
modern builders cannot even reach the clouds; 
the earth's Babylons and Romes in a few genera- 
tions are merely ruins haunted by moles and bats 
and curio vandals; and man's little systems of 
philosophy are but the laughingstock of succeed- 
ing generations. Man's best works are but houses 
of sand on the strand of the restless ocean of 
eternity, to be washed away by the resistless tide 
of events. Man is not the architect of his own 
fortunes; he is a builder. God is the architect. 
When man assumes the position of architect as 
well as builder, crumbling towers of Babel and 
the confusion of unbelief inevitably result. God 
can be known only by faith, and the redoubts of 



EVERY MAN A PENNY 133 

the Almighty cannot be scaled by man's little 
labor or logic. 

It must not be concluded from this that our 
Lord is encouraging the anarchistic idea that 
there is no reward or honor to the man who in- 
dustriously applies himself to a full day's labor. 
Labor is worship. Labor is life and growth. 
Labor is happiness and peace. The most pitiable 
object is the idle man. The honest laborer is the 
only real nobleman on earth. Labor makes him 
available for all the greatest blessings for which 
God has created men. Rest is a blessing only 
when it recuperates for further labor. Even 
luxurious idleness is not happiness, but leads to 
moral obhquity, extravagance, dissipation, and 
often to insanity. A poet sings that ''to labor is 
to pray." 

Labor is worship! — the robin is singing; 
Labor is worship! — the wild bee is ringing; 
Listen! that eloquent whisper, upspringing, 

Speaks to thy soul from out Nature's great heart. 

Only man shrinks, in the plan, from his part. 

Labor is Hfe! — 'tis the still water faileth; 

Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth; 

Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth! 

Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon. 
Labor is glory! — the flying cloud lightens; 
Only the waving wing changes and brightens; 
Idle hearts only the dark future frightens; 

Play the sweet keys, wouldst thou keep them in tune! 

Labor is rest — from the sorrows that greet us; 
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us; 
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us. 
Rest from world-sirens that lure us to ill. 



134 A MAN'S REACH 

Work, and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow; 
Work, thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow; 
Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping willow; 
Work with a stout heart and resolute will! 

Labor is health! — lo! the husbandman reaping. 
How through the veins goes the hfe-current leaping! 
How his strong arm in his stalwart pride sweeping, 

True as a sunbeam the swift sickle guides! 
Labor is wealth! — in the sea the pearl groweth; 
Rich the queen's robe from the frail cocoon floweth; 
From the fine acorn the strong forest bloweth; 

Temple and statue the marble block hides. 

Droop not, though shame, sin, and anguish are round thee! 
Bravely fling off the cold chain that hath bound thee! 
Look to yon pure heaven smiling beyond thee! 

Rest not content in thy darkness, a clod! 
Work — for some good, be it ever so slowly; 
Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly; 
Labor! — all labor is noble and holy; 

Let thy great deeds be thy prayer to thy God! 

Within the kingdom of heaven the most blessed 
man is not the one-hour toiler. He may gain his 
entrance by faith, but if he would maintain 
his honor and his blessing, and become a fruitful 
branch, it will be only by continued and loving 
devotion. Our Lord does not here disparage the 
industrious, painstaking worker in his vineyard. 
He is simply striving to correct the mistakes of 
his disciples in supposing that infinite life and 
goodness are purchasable by cheap coins of finite 
mintage. Faith is the portal to the kingdom, 
but work is the occupation of the citizens of the 
kingdom. 

The other good lesson of this much-misunder- 



EVERY MAN A PENNY 135 

stood parable is that in Christ's kingdom on 
earth, while there are wages, there must also be 
gifts, and while there is justice there must be 
bounties. Christ's mission was to lift humanity 
by imparting divinity. The young ruler heard 
Christ say, ^^Give to the poor — and come and 
follow me." Christ ever and always linked him- 
self to debased and depressed humanity. In 
God's government we are familiar with his use of 
wages and gifts. Sin pays wages, but God offers 
gifts. Man's sins are promptly paid for with 
death, for sin is death; and if man for his little 
good received simply wages, it would be some 
temporal or finite reward; but God goes beyond 
man's earning power and not only gives him 
wages, but adds the gift of eternal hfe. For being 
faithful in a "few things" God not only trusts 
man to rule "many things," but admits him into 
"the joy of the Lord." For finite fidelity there 
is infinite recompense. The farmer by labor in his 
fields touches the hem of the garment of the 
Creator, and the toiler in the vineyard of the 
Lord is introduced to the mystery of life. 

What God does with man, man must do with 
his fellows. To his brothers man must dispense 
bounties and gifts as well as justice and wages. 
Herein lies the solution of the vexatious social 
problems of our day. Christianity is equal to the 
great task of inaugurating a happy and complete 
social condition. It is a mistaken principle of 
economics that society has no duty to the man 



136 A MAN'S REACH 

who, for some reason, cannot, or does not, earn 
a full wage. The world is full of fractional men, 
men who are found idle at nine o'clock in the 
morning, at twelve o'clock, at three in the after- 
noon, at five o'clock. The faithful, industrious 
man represents a unit; thank God, there are 
many such. Then there are the nine-twelfths of a 
man, the six-twelfths of a man, the three-twelfths 
of a man, and, lastly, the one-hour toiler — the 
one-twelfth of a man; all are fractions of a unit. 

The great sociological idea emphasized by Jesus 
in this parable is that just as the lord of the vine- 
yard went out at succeeding hours of the day and 
hired the tardy workmen, so it must be the business 
of society to do all in its power for the fractional 
man. The units will take care of themselves. 
Christianity has a special mission to the fractional 
man. If there had been no fractional men Christ 
would not have come. There are many super- 
inducing causes which swell the army of fractional 
men. They are most frequently victims of causes 
over which they had and have no control; and so 
long as the causes are not removed the effects are 
certain to appear. 

If the fractional man receives wages and justice 
only, he and his family will suffer. Gifts and 
bounties must be dispensed wisely and with in- 
creasing care. The fractional man is the product 
of heredity or environment or both. If he would 
be made to approach steadily to the dignity of a 
unit, he must be given better environment, for 



EVERY MAN A PENNY 137 

however inexorable heredity may seem to be, it is 
a deep-seated principle that environment is 
stronger than heredity. In the efforts to elevate 
the fractional man, therefore, there must be relief 
bounties and preventive bounties. 

Relief bounties must aid the idle man to find 
work, and force him, if necessary, to stay by his 
work by most judiciously supplementing his 
small wage for a time for the benefit of his family. 
It is safe to say that if all men had the same 
good fortune in ancestry and birth and oppor- 
tunity the number of unfortunates would be much 
reduced. Men's successes or failures, as a rule, 
depend more upon blood and environment than 
upon any phenomenal genius. Then there must 
be preventive bounties, in order that the cruel 
forces which inevitably produce the fractional 
man shall be destroyed. What evils and vices go 
on unrebuked, which, like the blight in the wheat- 
field, reduce the chances and efficiency of men 
around us! Many men are good workmen when 
they are sober, and many are industrious when 
they have work to do. Such men must have pre- 
ventive bounties in removing the temptation to 
drink and in assistance to find employment. 

Opportunity, and not alms, is a wise preventive 
bounty. Christ enshrined himself in the human 
form so that in every man there would be a re- 
minder of the Christ. No man can become so 
much of a degenerate that he does not bear some 
likeness to Christ. C/ins^ianity is the need of the 



138 A MAN'S REACH 

world's social condition. Many other things will 
help, but the shortest and surest method for the 
awakening and development of the fractional man 
is to have Christ — '^ Christ in him the hope." 

How long it takes a tardy Christianity to dis- 
cover its true mission! So much has Christ been 
the inspiration of poem, picture, statue, song, and 
sermon that a selfish, hurrying world has willingly 
accepted a sentimental Christ, until to-day our 
neglected Lord is calling to us. His voice comes 
up to us from the depths of despair and squalor 
and sorrow; from the haunts of fallen manhood 
and womanhood ; from the purgatories of vice and 
disease; and he is saying, as of old, ^'Go sell that 
thou hast and give to the poor, and come and fol- 
low me." The cries and wounds and agonies of 
humanity are the agonies and wounds and cries 
of Christ. 

The familiar term ^Vages" is derived from the 
Latin and means ^'sl pledge." It is a '^reward for 
labor," whether that labor be with the hands or 
the head or the heart or all of these combined. A 
wage-earner is one who for a stipulated amount 
engages in production for the profit of his em- 
ployer, and for his own benefit. Wages are fixed 
either for the amount of time consumed or the 
quality of the article produced. The wage varies 
according to the fluctuations in the purchasing 
power of money. If there is a debasement of the 
currency, there is a corresponding decrease in 
wages and a degradation of labor. When gold, 



EVERY MAN A PENNY 139 

which is the basis of money, was discovered in 
CaUfornia and AustraUa there was a rise in wages 
in America and England. 

A man whose employment is healthful and 
agreeable, and whose life is lengthened and 
strengthened by his labors, will have indeed a 
higher wage than the other man who, receiving 
the same amount of money, yet suffers injury 
from his toil. And there are often money dif- 
ferences without increasing benefit in the end. 
The true wage should, therefore, be based upon 
the mutual advantage which accrues to the em- 
ployer and the employee. The wage-earner should 
not expect to gain all the money, nor the wage- 
payer all of the benefit. The whole crux of what 
is called the labor problem lies in the inclination 
of the selfish human heart to cupidity. 

Among the ancient Greeks the helots — the la- 
boring people — were slaves and were bought and 
sold with the soil. In modern times there were 
multitudes of serfs in the Old World and slaves 
in the New and Old. But, happily, these have 
all been emancipated in our own generation. But 
there may still remain an abject servitude if the 
man who labors is held down by the iron heel of 
avarice, and is compelled to labor at a wage which 
keeps his family in poverty and lays upon him 
almost impossible burdens. 

As people grow richer and the purchasing power 
of money grows less, and the prices of life's neces- 
sities increase, wages should be steadily advanced. 



140 A MAN'S REACH 

That is a false and fatal economic condition, and 
will not be always tolerated, which makes it in- 
evitable that the rich shall grow richer and the 
poor become poorer. 

The law of wages should be discovered and en- 
forced just as all other laws of values. Many wise 
men have sought for the fundamental principles 
which underlie this great subject. It is a dictum 
of Adam Smith which can be accepted as a truism 
that "the produce of labor constitutes the natural 
recompense or wages of labor." But there will 
always be a problem and conflict if the pay to the 
man who toils is not commensurate with the 
profit of the man who employs. It is not a true 
and safe economic condition when the laborer 
does all of the work and the employer gains all of 
the profit, or when the wage-earner gets all the 
money and the employer stands all the losses. 

There never will be a permanent and wholly 
satisfactory condition until the producer who does 
the skillful labor shall not only receive his wage, 
but shall likewise share in the generous profits, 
which without his expert labor would be impos- 
sible. Whatever riches are acquired should be 
shared alike: the workman contributing his in- 
dustry and skill, and the employer contributing 
his genius and initiative; and then a proper 
division of the profits. These are ideal economic 
conditions toward which there is a slow but cer- 
tain evolution. 

The world has not wholly recovered from the 



EVERY MAN A PENNY 141 

erroneous notion that it is less respectable to be 
an artisan than a clerk, or attendant, or some- 
thing less laborious. Men have turned away 
from wholesome lucrative trades for this reason, 
and have sought secretarial positions, until to-day 
the master-workmen are larger money-makers 
than those who looked with discredit upon labor. 
The most independent man among us is he who 
is an expert in a line of labor for which there is a 
steadily increasing demand; and the wage of the 
master-mechanic has never been too large, and 
will become larger. That rich man was a real 
monster of selfishness who congratulated himself 
that he built his house at a profitable figure be- 
cause wages were low. Low wages never measure 
real comfort and contentment and prosperity. 
That is not a desirable condition when any class 
of men gain in any advantage at the expense of 
their fellow men. 

The price of labor, like all other conamodities, 
will be affected by the law of supply and demand. 
While it is probable that the entire regulation 
of wages by the State is impracticable, yet, as 
there is a starvation wage to which some cruel 
men would be willing to reduce their fellows, it 
should be within the province of Legislatures 
to pass minimum-wage laws, as well as laws 
regulating maximum hours of labor. If all men 
would honor the Golden Rule legislation would be 
unnecessary, but because selfish man has too re- 
luctantly conceded the rights of his fellows there 



142 A MAN^S REACH 

have been many laws passed, and there will be 
more, which are compelling the employers of 
labor to provide for the safety, comfort, con- 
venience, and health of their employees. 

There is a steady oscillation from those mediae- 
val and ancient days, when the laborer was a 
menial and the leisure class lived in luxury, 
toward that other point in the ascending arc of 
economic justice when the man that hires will 
make less proportional profit than the man that 
is hired. The day will come when the man who 
labors hardest with his hands, head and heart 
will possess the most luxuries; and the so-called 
leisure class will be compelled to pay so much 
for their enervating ease that that class of social 
parasites will soon exhaust their resources. If 
there is one monster and ingrate and tragic 
misshapen deformity, it is the indolent man, who 
lives on what he has inherited and contributes 
nothing to the sum total of human industry, sym- 
pathy and service. 

There can be nothing said against organized 
labor or incorporated capital, for men will get 
together for self-preservation; and these notable 
organizations which exist among us to-day help 
men to be loyal to each other and to stand firmly 
in contention for their rights, which will be recog- 
nized only when they possess the power of united 
action to enforce their just claims. 

To be a laboring man was never so honorable as 
to-day. Look at the wages paid in England as 



EVERY MAN A PENNY 143 

chronicled by the historians Macaulay and Gib- 
bon and Knight, when in the fifteenth century 
the laborer received four shillings a week, and the 
mason and carpenter five and one quarter pence 
per day without food; and a little later when the 
village preacher was ^^ passing rich on forty pounds 
a year.'' Contrast all these with the present day, 
and let men not be discouraged, but hopeful. The 
introduction of machinery advanced the price of 
labor, and the more intricate the machine the 
more skillful must the labor be, and the more is 
the labor worth. For example, look at the auto- 
mobile. It is not only the most ingenious present- 
day device for separating prosperous people from 
their money, to which some persons hold with 
such Shylock tenacity, but in the manufacture 
and operating of this remarkably useful instru- 
ment of comfort and convenience a vast army of 
men is now employed at high wages. 

To be happy and useful is the divinest achieve- 
ment of human life. Let it never be forgotten 
that the busy man is the happy and useful man; 
and that money alone never did and never can 
make anybody happy; and that money is useful 
only as it is transformed into joyful and thought- 
ful ministries. 

In the application of the Golden Rule the 
brotherhood and sisterhood of the face will be 
recognized and established. Then love will take 
the place of hate, and sympathy will wipe away 
indifference. The master and the man, as Tol- 



144 A MAN'S REACH 

stoy has pathetically declared, are each a neces- 
sity to the happiness and prosperity of the other. 

Ah, then shall all men's good 

Be each man's rule, and universal peace 

Lie like a shaft of light across the land. 

Plainly, there is just one cure for all these in- 
dustrial social ills. Dr. Maurice spoke wisely 
when he said, ^^Be very sure of this, that no 
human creatures will be found saying sincerely, 
^Our brothers' on earth, unless they have said 
previously 'Our Father who art in heaven.' " The 
Golden Rule is Christ's law, and only Christ can 
completely enforce that law. Let us, therefore, 
try Christianity. Let us give Christianity a 
chance. 

The equality of all men will be hastened when 
each man becomes the custodian of the health, 
the happiness, the comfort, the morals of the 
other. It must ever be remembered that the 
truth of the unity of the race is inherent from 
creation. Dr. Washington Gladden has said, 'The 
law of the unity of human interests is not true 
because Christ taught it; he taught it because 
it is true." It takes the world a long time to 
understand Christ. Do you remember Lowell's 
poetic parable in which he represents Jesus say- 
ing, ''I will go and see how the men, my brethren, 
believe in me"; and he descends to earth to be 
honored and feted by people everywhere. Christ 
is represented as gently rebuking his followers 



EVERY MAN A PENNY 145 

for all their '^pomp and state/' and the poem 
continues : 

Then Christ sought out an artisan, 
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, 
And a motherless gu'l, whose fingers thin. 
Pushed from her faintly want and sin. 
These set he in the midst of them. 
And as they drew back their garments' hem 
In fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said he, 
"The images ye have made of me." 



IX 
WHAT IS LIFE? 



147 



As a shaft that is sped from a bow unseen to an unseen mark, 
As a bird that gleams in the firelight, and hurries from dark to 

dark, 
As the face of the stranger who smiles as we passed in the crowded 

street — 
Our life is a glimmer, a flutter, a memory, fading, yet sweet! 

— Lawton. 

The pregnant quarry teemed with human ioYva.— Oliver 
Goldsmith. 

Life is a mission. Every other definition of life is false, and 
leads all who accept it astray. Religion, science, philosophy, 
though still at variance upon many points, all agree in this, that 
every existence is an aim. — Mazzini. 



148 



CHAPTER IX 
WHAT IS LIFE? 

Let us continue a little further the explorations 
of the previous chapter. 

The ancients believed that life proceeded from 
fire, and devotedly worshiped the Lares and 
Penates, tutelary deities of the ashes of the 
hearthstone. The vestal virgins kept the fires 
continuously burning upon sacred altars as a 
token of national prosperity, and Prometheus was 
believed to have animated a figure of clay by 
putting a spark of fire into it. 

Materialistic science is increasingly puzzled with 
the riddle of physical fife. Tyndall and Pasteur 
exploded forever the theory of spontaneous gen- 
eration. Huxley strongly declared that ^^there is 
not a shadow of trustworthy evidence that abio- 
genesis does take place, or has taken place' ^; and 
Spencer wrote: '^I do not believe in spontaneous 
generation, commonly alleged. The very con- 
ception of spontaneity is wholly incongruous with 
the conception of evolution." Haeckel confesses 
that the ''inner essence is unknown." Lord Kelvin 
indulged his fancy a little when he said that per- 
haps the original life germ came from distant 
planets by means of meter orites. It is therefore 
a generally accepted shibboleth of science that 

149 



150 A MAN'S REACH 

"all living comes from living" — Omne vivum ex 
vivo. 

Those who ruthlessly seek for a mechanical in- 
terpretation of life only expose themselves to pity. 
The chemist's laboratory will probably never pro- 
duce a perfect germ of life. All life comes from 
life, and behind all Hfe and force are force and 
life — God. "Life is a secret to be reverenced, but 
not explained." 

What is life? "A day at most," says Burns; 
"A short summer — man a flower," says Johnson; 
"A pendulum between a smile and a tear," accord- 
ing to Byron; Sir Walter Raleigh believed that 
"hfe is a tragedy"; and Seneca that life is a "war- 
fare"; Shakespeare, "A miracle" — "a shuttle"; 
Moses said it was "as a watch in the night"; and 
David "As a flower of the field"; and James wrote 
that life is "as a vapor"; and dear John Whittier 
sang. 

Our lives are albums written through 
With good will, with false or true. 
And as the blessed angels turn 

The pages of our years, 
God grant they read the good with smiles, 

And blot the ill with tears. 

Life is man's chance — it is opportunity. Life 
is responding to our environment. By examining 
the wing of a bird and the fin of a fish atmos- 
phere and water can be predicated. Man's body, 
mind, heart all prophesy achievement and des- 
tiny. Man was created "a shaving less than God.'" 
Man is placed here to subdue the earth, but he 



WHAT IS LIFE? 151 

cannot subdue a grain of sand until he has learned 
how to subdue himself. Upon the mastery of 
himself depends the utilization of his chance. 
^'He that conquers himself conquers an energy." 

There are certain modern philosophers who in 
seeking for a definition of life are attempting to 
disturb and, if possible, destroy many sacred 
ideals upon which society has depended in the 
past. It is passing strange that many of these 
blind leaders encourage larger physical indulgence 
— a life more sensual and less spiritual. For in- 
stance, G. Bernard Shaw says, ''Man has really 
very little to be thankful for"; and ''Beware of a 
man whose God is in the skies"; and "If there is 
any one sin in the present state of evolution, it 
is the sin of contentment." He advises "the 
repudiation of duty as the first step toward prog- 
ress," and declares there is no such thing as God, 
beauty, and poverty. These statements are either 
the droohngs of an idiot, the silly chatterings of 
an ape, or the vicious vagaries of a libertine in 
the garb of a disciple of truth. His dramatic 
writings are neurotic, amorous, debasing, corrupt- 
ing, and obnoxious — an expression of his icono- 
clastic theories. He has remarkable facility for 
saying nonsensical things with a show of sincerity. 

In seeking for a solution to the same riddle of 
life William Blake declares, "Death to the fa- 
miliar," and "only the inconceivable and impos- 
sible and unattainable exalt." As we become 
acquainted with the ebullitions of this vaporous 



152 A MAN'S REACH 

man we reach a quick conclusion that, instead 
of being '^a pontiff of a new spiritual dispensa- 
tion/' he is, indeed, a clown of tomfoolery, of the 
impracticable and the useless. 

Quaint Count Tolstoy made a rather pic- 
turesque, if not heroic, attempt to define life, 
but he only succeeded in confusing the issue. A 
recent writer has well characterized this para- 
doxical Russian: ^'It is the half-truth that is the 
dangerous thing. The fatal half-truth has no 
more distinguished exponent than Count Tolstoy. 
He is antithetical, not synthetical. The effect of 
his teaching is to divide men, not unite them.'' 
The old gentleman was a victim of an unctuous 
and apparently unconscious egotism, which super- 
induced that supremely peaceful condition of 
mind which gave him unqualified confidence in 
his own conclusions. 

What shall be said of Nietzsche, whose icon- 
oclastic vagaries have gained an immense vogue 
in Europe? The Ten Commandments are a 
great embarrassment to the application of his 
theories. If his followers were to attempt to 
apply, for instance, such a principle, as '^Chastity 
is a virtue for some, but for many it is almost a 
vice," they would find it most difficult to keep 
themselves out of adulterous complications and 
consequent prison cells. 

The baneful and logical results of Nietzscheism 
may be seen when Dr. Parker's degenerated pul- 
pit in City Temple, London, bears such heretical 



WHAT IS LIFE? 153 

and traitorous attacks upon the pure ideals of 
society and religion as the following: "The roue 
you saw in Piccadilly last night, who went out to 
corrupt innocence and to wallow in filthiness of 
the flesh, was engaged in his blundering quest for 
God." This would be grotesque if it were not 
so pitiful. "Sin is, after all, a quest for God," he 
continues. This is horribly and diabolically ab- 
surd. No such respectability is to be accorded the 
libertine and fiend incarnate. Sin is no part of 
God^s plan for the discovery of God to man. 
Christ came to discover sin to man. Sin is at 
the nadir. God is at the zenith. Sin is not a 
virtuous path toward God, but it is error, and 
always the penalty of law disobeyed or forgotten. 
"The wages of sin is death." 

All such teachers who seek to solve the problem 
of life by defying biblical standards not only 
deepen the mystery of life, but they poison and 
shorten life. A writer says, "Nietzsche says in 
substance, ToUow yourselves and you will fol- 
low me; follow me and you will lose both your- 
selves and me.' " Now, contrast all these vain, 
destructive teachings with Jesus of Nazareth, who 
writes: "Follow me, and I will make you fishers 
of men." "Come unto me, and I will give you 
rest!" 

Any theory of life which shortens or vitiates life, 
and makes life more bewildering, is false — a curse 
— and should be promptly and pugnaciously re- 
sisted. "More Hfe" should be the watchword. 



154 A MAN'S REACH 

More life is a remedy for death, as more health is 
a defense against disease, and as more power in 
the engine reduces the friction and increases the 
momentum. Life fulfills its mission as it accepts 
more life and inspires more life in others. We 
have an affinity for life, and that is why we love 
babies, flowers, trees, and domestic animals. 
Larger life is not found in physical excesses, but 
in maintaining physical vitality, by pure air, 
abundance of water, simple food, and regular 
exercise. "O for health and a day!'' cried a wise 
man. Destiny is often fixed by health. 

Life is increased and enriched by an intellectual 
grasp of truth. Life is what we are thinking 
about. Lord Macaulay said: ''If anyone would 
make me a king — the greatest who ever lived — 
with palaces, gardens, dinners, hundreds of ser- 
vants, etc., on condition that I would not read 
books, I would not be a king. I should rather be 
a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than 
a king who did not love reading." Many of life's 
choicest secrets are found in good books. All 
ages contribute to the enlarged life of the person 
who reads great books. 

If we had more faith we would have more life. 
Professor William James wrote, thoughtfully: ''Our 
faith beforehand in an uncertified result is often 
the thing which makes the result come true. 
What use can a scientific life have for 'maybes' ? I 
have been asked. It has much to do, and human 
life everything to do with them. There is not a 



WHAT IS LIFE? 155 

scientific exploration or experiment or textbook 
that may not be a mistake. Believe what is in 
line with yom- needs, for only by such behef is the 
need fulfilled.'^ All life's endeavors begin with X 
— the unknown quantity, whose value must be 
discovered; an hypothetical proposition to be re- 
placed by demonstration. ^'Have faith in God.'' 
Beware of the man who has not a God in the 
skies. 

More service makes more life. Giving increases 
oiu" correspondences. Life is responding to our 
environment, which we do by service. The 
flower has more hfe than the blade of grass, the 
bird than the flower, the horse than the bird; 
and man more than all of these, because he is 
capable of serving most. If he gives, he gets. It 
is easy to get, hard to give, and harder to give 
up. Character is the fine art of giving up. 

Christ is the fourth dimension of the soul. We 
have height and depth and breadth, but Christ 
is the fulfillment of the soul's inexpressible reach. 
He said, "I am come that they might have hfe, 
and that they might have it more abimdantly." 
Our httle pet dog walked about the Christmas tree, 
saw the tinsel, and ate any candy he could reach, 
but he did not understand. We have a dimension 
which the dog does not possess. So, if we leave 
Christ out of our life, we go about in the midst of 
beautiful spiritual forces, but we do not see or 
feel them. The spirit is life. Love is spirit; 
gravity, steam, electricity, patriotism, sympathy 



156 A MAN'S REACH 

are spirit. The spiritual is the real Hfe. When the 
body disintegrates, the spirit untrammeled enters 
fully into its fourth dimension. To make this 
temporary human hut an abiding place of spirit 
must be our struggle. 

Life is not an idle ore, 

But iron dug from central gloom, 
And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipt in baths of hissing tears, 

And battered with the shocks of doom. 
To shape and use. 

We must therefore welcome the forge and the 
anvil. 

All physical life except man's is being lived — 
controlled by fixed laws. Man reaches his highest 
possibility when, of his own volition and humble 
submission to God, he permits himself to be lived 
— a willing branch for the purposes of God. 
Lowell sang of Wendell Phillips, 

He humbly joined himself to the weaker part, 
So that he might be the nearer to God's heart. 

And Whittier: 

And Thou, O Lord, by whom are seen 

Thy creatures as they be. 
Forgive me if too close I lean 

My human heart on thee. 

When Saint Gaudens was carving his bas-relief 
masterpiece in memory of dear Robert Louis 
Stevenson, with the fine discrimination of a 
genius he adopted the translated poet's own lines: 



WHAT IS LIFE? 157 

Under the wide and starry sky- 
Dig the grave and let me lie; 

Glad did I Hve and gladly die, 
And I laid me down with a will. 

This be the verse you grave for me; 

Here he Ues where he longed to be; 
Home is the sailor home from the sea, 

And the hunter home from the hill. 



X 

SELF-MASTERY 



159 



Love took up the harp of Life and smote 

On all the chords with might; 
Smote the chord of Self, that trembling 

Passed in music out of sight. 

— Tennyson. 

I hold it truth, with him who sings 
To one clear harp in divers tones, 
That men may rise on stepping-stones 

Of their dead selves to higher things. 

— In Memoriam. 

He that ruleth his own spirit is better than he that taketh a 
city. — Proverbs. 



160 



CHAPTER X 
SELF-MASTERY 

Jesus Christ, the Great Exemplar, is himself 
the living embodiment of all Christian ideals. 
Let us contemplate his superb self-mastery. He 
said, ^^I came down from heaven, not to do mine 
own will, but the will of him that sent me." ''He 
himnbled himself, and became obedient unto death, 
even the death of the cross." He was rich, and for 
our sakes became poor, that we through his pov- 
erty might be made rich. One ardent convert 
said, ''Master, I will follow thee whithersoever 
thou goest," and Jesus replied, "The foxes have 
holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; but the 
Son of man hath not where to lay his head." 
That he might be touched with a feeUng of the 
infirmities of mankind, the soul of Christ struck 
the whole gamut of human suffering: poverty, 
temptation, pain, and sorrow. 

Never in all the annals of self-mastery was 
there such an example of personal restraint as in 
the events of Christ's betrayal and trial and 
martyrdom. Instead of grinding perfidious Judas 
into powder as he gave the traitorous kiss, Jesus 
asked, in words which afterward broke the heart 
of Iscariot, "Betray est thou the Son of man with 
a kiss?" When Peter chivalrously drew a weapon 

161 



162 A MAN'S REACH 

to defend his Master, he was gently rebuked with 
the words, ^Tut up again thy sword into his 
place''; and Jesus turned quickly and healed the 
wound which the hasty disciple had inflicted, and 
said, 'Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to 
my Father and he shall presently give me more 
than twelve legions of angels?" 

During all that tragical travesty of justice called 
the trial of Jesus, when they scourged him, and 
ridiculed him by placing a royal robe about him, 
and pressed a crown of cruel thorns upon his 
sacred brow, and spat in his wonderful face, 
there was not an instant when Jesus could not 
have resented all these gross and ignominious in- 
dignities, and visited condign and deserved pun- 
ishment upon those degenerate malefactors. And 
when they reached the tragical climax of all 
their perfidy by nailing him to a cross, as if he 
were the most debased criminal, and disdainfully 
went back and forth, "wagging their heads" and 
hurling spiteful epithets and tauntings, and then, 
having exhausted their resources of treachery, 
with dehberate diabohsm they ''sat down and 
watched him there," so complete was our Lord's 
infinite command of his own spirit that, ''Hke a 
sheep before its shearers is dumb, so he opened 
not his mouth." And he exhibited all this pa- 
tient endurance when, in an instant, a single word 
from his holy lips could have emptied all the vials 
of divine wrath upon his vile persecutors. So 
amazing and phenomenal was our Lord's self- 



SELF-MASTERY 163 

repression, and so finely did he hold the leash of 
his own outraged feehngs, and with such infinite 
patience did he pass through all this horrible 
ordeal of pain and torture, that a Roman officer, 
who was compelled to be present at the shameful 
execution, and had witnessed many times the 
infliction of the death penalty, said, "Truly this 
man was the Son of God.'' 

He might have built a palace at a word, 

Who sometimes had not where to lay his head; 
Time was, and he who nom'ished crowds with bread 

Would not one meal unto himseK afford; 

Twelve legions girded with angelic sword 
Were at his beck — the scorned and buffeted! 
He healed another's scratch, his own side bled, 

Side, feet, and hands with cruel piercings gored; 

wonderful the wonders left undone! 

And scarce less wonderful than those he wrought! 

O self-restraint, passing all human thought. 
To have all power and be — as having none! 
O self-denying Love, which felt alone 
For needs of others, never for its own! 

The problem of self-mastery is most difficult 
because we are created as individuals and are 
bound to defend ourselves. In fact, self-preserva- 
tion is regarded as the first law of life. Each soul 
is a cosmos. Each individual is a self-acting 
personality responsible for his career. How to 
develop selfhood and not become selfish is as 
narrow a boundary as the line which separates 
love from jealousy. 



164 A MAN'S REACH 

To make the problem more intricate, certain 
false teachers, like John Stuart Mill, announce 
that ^^Self-interest will control all things for the 
public weal"; and others, like Nietzsche, insist 
that ^^selfishness is the right of the weak and the 
duty of the strong." The ^'Over-man" ideal of 
some of these decadent modern philosophers is a 
creature who exploits other men, and rises upon 
the stepping-stones of the dead bones and hopes 
of others. It '^ deifies passion and despises rea- 
son," and ridicules faith in God and duty to our 
fellows. It talks about the ^^ escape from life." 
It says that ''it is the strong man's duty not to 
allow himself to be bound as the Liliputians bound 
Gulliver, for he must prevent the weak from shar- 
ing his strength with him." Selfishness is thus 
made an inglorious virtue. 

That stuff may do for the Shavites and the 
hypnotized followers of a crazy Nietzsche, but it 
is not Christianity, whose Divine Founder said 
long since, ''Whosoever will save his life shall 
lose it"; "If any man will come after me, let him 
deny himself"; "If thy right hand offend thee, 
cut it off"; and "If thou will be perfect, go sell 
and give." That, indeed, is the subjugation of 
self. 

Self-mastery is attained by reducing our un- 
necessary wants, and learning that "a man's life 
consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
which he possesseth"; by curbing our personal 
ambitions and natural desires for gain; by val- 



SELF-MASTERY 165 

iantly battling against vanity and self-interest. 
In self-mastery selfhood begins. 

Some men behave as if they thought the axis 
of the earth ran through their httle souls. In 
inverse ratio as men overestimate themselves does 
the world correctly estimate them. The swagger 
and pomposity of the self-centered man are never 
mistaken for true culture and real superiority. 
Stateliness, loneliness, simplicity, sublimity, and 
silence characterize the highest peaks. Shallow 
streams fret and overflow with troublesome inun- 
dations, but the deep rivers roll in rhythmic meas- 
ures toward the sea. 

The most ludicrous sight in the world is some 
bombastic little fellow, with a shrill falsetto voice, 
strutting about among his fellows vainly imagin- 
ing that he is the majestic cock of the walk, when 
all his fellow men know that he has not attained 
even the respectable proportions of a bantam 
rooster. These are the dwarfish creatures who are 
the defenders of the '^ Owlet Atheism,'^ which 

Sailing athwart the heavens at noon, 
Drops its blue fringed lids and shuts them close, 
And hooting at the glorious sun in heaven, 
Cries out, ''Where is it?" 

If we would acquire self-mastery, we must not 
take our eccentricities too seriously; we must 
not mistake idiosyncrasy for genius, or vanity 
for vision. We must remember that it would 
probably have made very little difference in the 
sum total of goodness if we had died in our child- 



166 A MAN'S REACH 

hood. We are too little to doubt, because we are 
too ignorant to understand. It is not at all likely 
that a thing is not true because we cannot com- 
prehend it. To hear some of these ^^ Owlet" folk 
talk you would wonder how the Creator got this 
big universe started without their presence and 
advice. Ruskin tells of a man whose name was 
Lord, who always spelled the name of Deity 
with a small ^^1" to avoid confusion with his own 
name. 

Proud man, dressed in a little brief authority, 

Plays such fantastic tricks 

Before high heaven 

As make the angels weep. 

The selfish man is a friendless man, an isolated 
man, a defeated man, a cynical man, a sarcastic 
man. Like the Ancient Mariner, he is 

Alone, alone, all, all alone; 
Alone on a wide, wide sea; 

like Napoleon in exile, a man without a coun- 
try, a general without an army, an emperor with- 
out an empire. Selfishness is tragedy. 

All who joy would win 
Must share it — happiness was born a twin. 

Self-mastery is not the extermination of self, 
but the exaltation of self; not flagellation, but 
chastening; not the elimination of self, but the en- 
thronement of goodness. In exquisite verse Eng- 



SELF-MASTERY 167 

land's laureate enshrines this ideal in Waterloo's 
modest but masterful victor: 

Rich in saving common sense, 

And as the greatest only are 
In his simphcity subhme. 

That tower of strength 
Which stood four square to all the winds that blew. 
The path of duty was the way to glory, 

For this is England's greatest son. 
He has gained a hundred fights 

And never lost an English gun. 

Contrast with this the Scottish bard's immortal 
Hnes : 

Despite those titles, power, and pelf, 
The wretch, concentered all in self. 
Living, shall forfeit fair renown. 
And, doubly dying, shall go down 
To the vile dust from whence he sprung. 
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. 

The penalty of selfish indulgence is painfully 
described in the career of the victim of Kipling's 
''Vampire" — "For some of him lived, but most of 
him died." Oblivion and extinction await the man 
who fives for himself and himself alone — he is 
mostly dead now before he reaches his grave. 

In some of the art stores you have doubtless seen 
what at first glimpse seems to be the etching of a 
beautiful but frivolous girl sitting admiringly be- 
fore a mirror in self-worship; but at a distance the 
picture resolves itself into a horrible skull with hol- 
low sockets for eyes, and sharp cheek-bones, and 
ghastly teeth. It is a frightful, artistic representa- 
tion of the tragedy of vanity and selfishness. In 



168 A MAN'S REACH 

contrast with this, I am thinking of a gentlewoman 
of quiet beauty. Her home was ever cheerful and 
hospitable. Her heart was tender with all ex- 
quisite motherliness. Her hands were ever busy 
with loving ministries. The sick, the sad, the 
needy, the wayward were all the recipients of her 
angelic kindnesses. Like a messenger of light, 
she would glide into life's dark and forbidding 
places. When she went up to her crown over- 
whelming loneliness crept over her home, her 
church, and her neighborhood. It is wonderful 
what a world of gracious influences may center 
in the heart of one little woman! Though she 
was constantly giving up for others, she was stead- 
ily adding to the luster of her own divine identity. 
She did not surrender her personality, she gained 
it. She did not abandon immortahty, she won 
it; and as a gracious Christian princess she now 
wears a crown of fadeless beauty and a robe of 
spotless white. 

With a flavor of dogmatism and a show of 
originality Frederic Harrison has said: '^We be- 
lieve that selfishness can be cured only by religion 
— by a social religion, the aim of which is not to 
land the believer in heaven, but to reform human 
nature upon earth. Religion has never fairly set 
itself to that direct object, though incidentally it 
has done much to promote it, often without 
intending it, and sometimes in spite of its own 
dogmatic precepts." This often useful writer 
seems to overlook the fact that that is just what 



SELF-MASTERY 169 

Jesus Christ's gospel came to do. The landing 
of people in heaven was not what Jesus Christ 
came primarily to do, but to land heaven down 
here among the people. ^^I am come that they 
might have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly." ^'Love your enemies." '^If ye for- 
give not men their trespasses, neither will your 
Father forgive your trespasses." ^'Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me." That is all a 
social religion. It takes some belated philosophers 
a long time to wake up. There is a divine impera- 
tive urging all men into generous ministries 
toward their fellow — ^^Ye that are strong ought." 
Sidney Lanier, in his charming little poem on 
his mocking bird, ^'Bob," says in a preliminary 
note: ''We have learned much of the privilege of 
genius, of the right of the artist to live out his 
own existence free from the conventionalities of 
society, of the unmorality of art, etc., but I do 
protest that the greater the artist, and the more 
profound his pity for his fellow men for whom he 
works, the readier will be his willingness to forego 
the privileges of genius, and cage himself in the 
conventionalities even as the mocking bird is 
caged." In the realm of self-mastery there is no 
such thing as ''art for art's sake," or "business for 
business' sake," or "ambition for ambition's 
sake"; for art and business and ambition have 
no excuse for existence unless they contribute to 
the uplift of humanity. Anything which exploits 



170 A MAN'S REACH 

mankind for its own sake, and leaves men and 
women tainted or tarnished, as "art for art's 
sake" often does, will not in some future day of 
superb unselfishness be permitted to flutter its 
alluring and dissipating blandishments, and tres- 
pass ruthlessly upon the conventionalities. It 
must be art for humanity's sake, business for 
humanity's sake, ambition for humanity's sake, 
or these things are not to be tolerated at all. 

He that masters himself acquires an energy. 
All other enemies are easily foiled and routed 
after a man has conquered himself. He has poise 
and perspective; he knows the law of values, and 
is not easily unweaponed because, having fought 
the intense duel of self-mastery, he has become 
acquainted with the art of successful defense. 
"He that ruleth his own spirit is better than he 
which taketh a city" because many a conqueror of 
walled citadels has become a tragic victim of his 
own weaknesses and foibles. If Napoleon could 
have mastered Bonaparte, he would have ex- 
changed places with Wellington. Prodigies of 
vanity will sooner or later come to the humiliation 
of Waterloo and the dingy and doleful monotony 
of Saint Helena. The genius of progress does not 
intend to place a permanent crown upon the 
imperious brow of selfishness. Selfishness is re- 
pugnant to the ideals and discordant to the 
rhythm of true progress. Precipices and catas- 
trophes await the selfish cavalier who tramples 
his fellows under his horse's hoofs, but kingdoms 



SELF-MASTERY 171 

and principalities are holding out jeweled crowns 
to those who faithfully serve their brother men. 

That is rare and victorious vantage ground upon 
which a warrior stands when he rests his feet upon 
the prostrate figure of his vanquished self. In the 
glittering armor of their self-mastery Joseph and 
Daniel passed from prison pens to premiership 
pinnacles; and Paul from the jaws of wild beasts 
and the treacherous mahgnity of a multitudinous 
foe to that ghstening Tabor summit from which 
he could shout back to his devoted admirer: ''I 
am now ready to be offered, and the time of my 
departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, 
I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: 
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me 
only, but unto all them also that love his 
appearing." 

In the soft robes of that same self-mastery a 
sweet little crippled mother reached the divinest 
realization : 

She folded up the worn and mended frock, 

And smoothed it tenderly upon her knee, 
Then through the soft web of a wee red sock 

She wove the bright woof, musing thoughtfully: 
''Can this be all? The great world is fair; 

I hunger for its green and pleasant ways." 
A cripple, prisoned in her restless chair, 

Looks from her window with a wistful gaze. 

*T can but weave a faint thread to and fro, 
Making a frail woof in a baby's sock; 



172 A MAN^S REACH 

Into the world's sweet tumult I would go, 

At its strong gates my trembling hands would knock." 

Just then the children came, the father too; 
Their eager faces lit the twilight gloom. 

"Dear heart," he whispered, as he nearer drew, 
"How sweet it is within this little room! 

"God puts my strongest comfort here to draw 

When thirst is great and common wells are dry. 
Your pure desire is my unerring law; 

Tell me, dear one, who is so safe as I? 
Home is the pasture where my soul may feed, 

This room a paradise has grown to be; 
And only when these patient feet shall lead 

Can it be home for these dear ones and me." 

He touched with reverent hand the helpless feet, 

The children crowded close and kissed her hair. 
"Our mother is so good and kind and sweet. 

There's not another like her anywhere!" 
The baby in her low bed opened wide 

The soft blue flowers of her timid eyes 
And viewed the group about the cradle-side 

With smiles of glad and innocent surprise. 

The mother drew the baby to her knee. 
And, smiling, said: "The stars shine soft to-night. 

My world is fair; its edges sweet to me. 
And whatsoever is, dear Lord, is right!" 

— Unknown. 

And likewise did Esther, beautiful queen, pass 
from the luxurious obscurity of an Oriental palace 
into the wide realm of a world benefactress. 
Truly, those who will lose their lives shall find 
them. Character is the fine art of giving up. 

It was in this same glittering armor of .self- 
mastery that Colonel W. B. Travis sent his mes- 
sage from the besieged Alamo. Travis and Davy 
Crockett and Colonel Bowie and nearly two hun- 



SELF-MASTERY 173 

dred other brave patriots were making their gal- 
lant stand for the liberty of Texas. Cruel Santa 
Anna had come up from Mexico with a large army 
to capture or destroy, and had surrounded the 
fort with a long siege, determined that he would 
starve his prisoners into abject surrender. Travis 
succeeded in sending a letter through the guard 
asking his friends for reinforcements. In this 
notable message he says: ''We will never retreat 
or surrender. Take good care of my motherless 
little boy. If I live, I will educate and protect 
him; if I die, he will be comforted by knowing 
that he had a father who was willing to lay down 
his life for his country." What a self-mastering 
patriot was this gallant defender of liberty! Not 
long afterward (for reenforcements were not avail- 
able) the bloodthirsty invader fiercely assaulted 
the Alamo with its depleted garrison. O, what a 
slaughter was there! Every defender of liberty 
fought until he was shot down by a relentless foe. 
"Thermopylae had its messengers of defeat; the 
Alamo had none." 

Some months ago, when we were luxuriously 
reveUng in the midst of the enchanting beauty 
of an early southern California springtime, scenes 
were being enacted in the midst of the frigid and 
tragic isolation of the south pole which only 
recently have been brought to the attention of 
the world. In . all the records of self-mastery 
there is nothing to surpass the gallant self- 
sacrifice of Captain Robert Scott and his heroic 



174 A MAN^S REACH 

companions. Scott's antarctic expedition left 
London in June, 1910. No word was received 
from them until the next spring, and again in 
April, 1912; but on February 10, 1913, word came 
to the anxious friends that the records of the suc- 
cessful journey, and the bodies of Captain Scott 
and four of his companions, had been recovered. 
They reached the south pole January 18, 1912, 
and found the tent and records left there by 
Captain Roald Amundsen. 

The records of Captain Scott are an epic of 
chivalry and courage. Adverse weather condi- 
tions were encountered, and fierce blizzards ob- 
structed their journey homeward. In his diary 
Captain Scott tells of the martyrdom of Captain 
Gates, whose feet and hands had become so ter- 
ribly frostbitten that his condition was making it 
impossible for the little party to move rapidly 
enough, and the chances of the safety of all the 
others were imperiled. Accordingly, one morning 
Captain Gates deliberately walked out of the 
camp into a terrible blizzard and never came 
back. The diary says: ^'We knew that Gates 
was walking to his death, but although we tried 
to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave 
man and an English gentleman. '^ Captain Scott's 
j&nal message was written March 25, but was not 
found until eight months later, when the relief 
party made their tragic discoveries. This letter 
is one of the most pathetic and stirring contribu- 
tions to the annals of true heroism, and will be 



SELF-MASTERY 175 

read by the youth of this and future generations to 
inspire them to deeds of self-sacrifice in the interest 
of truth and humanity. Here are his final words: 

''We arrived within eleven miles of our old 
One Ton camp with fuel for one hot meal and 
food for two days. For four days we have been 
unable to leave the tent, the gale blowing about 
us. We are weak. Writing is difficult, but for 
my own sake I do not regret this joiurney, which 
has shown that Englishmen can endure hard- 
ships, help one another, and meet death with as 
great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took 
risks. We knew we took them. Things have 
come out against us, and therefore we have no 
cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Provi- 
dence, determined still to do our best to the last. 
But if we have been willing to give our lives to 
this enterprise, which is for the honor of our 
country, I appeal to our coimtrymen to see that 
those who depend upon us are properly cared for. 
Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of 
the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my 
companions which would have stirred the heart 
of every Englishman. These rough notes and our 
dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, 
a great, rich country like ours will see that those 
who are dependent upon us are properly pro- 
vided for.'^ 

Yes, love is life. Love for duty; for our coun- 
try, for our friends, for our God, is fife; and love 
is self-mastery. 



XI 

SYMPATHY 



177 



Where is Abel thy brother? — Genesis. 

Pity and need 
Make all flesh kin. There is no caste in blood. 

— Edwin Arnold. 

He watched and prayed and felt for all. — Goldsmith. 

Never elated while one man's oppressed. 
Never dejected while another's blessed. 

— Pope. 

He that hateth his brother is a murderer. — Bible. 



178 



CHAPTER XI 
SYMPATHY 

It seems scarcely more than a dozen years since 
the word ^ ^altruism" began to have a vogue among 
us. It was first employed by the philosopher 
Comte to denote the benevolent instincts and the 
actions which prompted them, and is derived 
from the little Latin word alter, which means 
^^other.'' It was used by this distinguished 
teacher to designate the opposite of egotism. 
Later Herbert Spencer made generous use of the 
word, and Henry Drummond gave it heart and 
soul by applying it in all his evangelical teach- 
ings, until to-day, if possible, it is more generally 
employed by religious teachers than by philoso- 
phers. 

The last twenty-five years have undoubtedly 
witnessed a decided change of emphasis in mat- 
ters which pertain to man's relation to himself 
and his fellows. In the evolution of the race, 
and in the development of the individual, there 
is first the struggle for life. Every living thing 
looks to the main chance. Self-preservation seems 
to be the first law of life, and this instinct to pre- 
serve self leads to supreme selfishness in the 
individual and to the oppression and destruction 
of whatever hinders. But this ''struggle for life'' 

179 



180 A MAN'S REACH 

in the development of society, under the benign 
influence of the Divine Altruist, has passed now 
into that more advanced evolutionary stage of 
what Drummond calls "The struggle for the Hfe 
of others/' 

The world is a very dull pupil in the things 
upon which its own life and growth depend. The 
first lesson in altruism was taught far back in 
the morning of time when the two brothers of our 
first parents brought their offerings to God; and 
because the younger brother's gift was more ac- 
ceptable, the murderous instincts of the elder 
brother were aroused, and "Cain rose up against 
Abel his brother and slew him." For this tragic 
crime God set a mark upon Cain and made him a 
vagabond and wanderer on the face of the earth. 
This was Cain's punishment because he would 
not acknowledge that he was his brother's keeper. 
Another lesson was taught this dull pupil of the 
world when the Great Nazarene Teacher revealed 
to his followers the divine sentiments of the Golden 
Rule, and enshrined forever his immortal doc- 
trine in the words, "Inasmuch as ye have done it 
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye 
have done it unto me." 

All through the Great Textbook, which the 
pupils in the school of life have had placed in 
their hands, from Genesis to Revelation, there 
runs a golden thread of divine teaching that our 
obligation is greatest to those who need us most; 
and that the destiny and happiness of each indi- 



SYMPATHY 181 

vidual is so involved in the other that all men 
must rise or fall together. 

Jesus Christ was the world's greatest Altruist. 
"All mankind loves a lover," and all the world is 
going after Jesus because he is making love to the 
world. All the world listens to the optimist, and 
all the world hearkens to Jesus because he is an 
incorrigible Optimist. ''Behold the world is gone 
after him/' his enemies said. One day from a 
vantage spot on the graceful shoulders of Olivet, 
with outstretched hands and tearful eyes, as he 
viewed the beautiful city lying before him like a 
radiant jewel in a setting of jasper, he said, ''O, 
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the 
prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto 
thee, how often would I have gathered thy chil- 
dren together even as a hen gathereth her chickens 
under her wings, but ye would not!" Love sym- 
pathizes and sacrifices, and sympathy is an 
essential element in Christian character. The 
soft, sweet word sympathy is derived from two 
Greek words, sun pathos y which mean "to suffer 
with." The ancient Stoics, following the teaching 
of their founder, Zeno, denounced all expressions 
of sympathy. "The Stoic ethics was the ethics 
of apathy" in contradistinction to sympathy. 
They held that all emotions are due to mental 
disturbances. They declared in pessimistic phrase, 
"Only a few men are virtuous; the vast majority 
of men are fools." If you should in your pere- 
grinations throughout the world find any deluded 



182 A MAN'S REACH 

folk who denounce the subhme Christian grace of 
sympathy, you may make up your mind that they 
are rank pagans, no matter what may be their 
high-sounding names. 

The most tender appeal ever made for human 
sympathy came from the Ups of Jesus in the 
garden of Gethsemane, when, returning to his 
three friends and finding them asleep, his lonely, 
wounded spirit sighed, ^What, could ye not 
watch with me one hour?" Sympathy is spon- 
taneous tenderness for those in distress. It 
establishes the great brotherhood of man. It has 
joy for the happy and tears for the sad. It gives 
solace to the rich and bounties to the poor; and 
since ''the gift without the giver is bare," sym- 
pathy gives itself with its offering. Sympathy is 
the great lubricator of life's intricate and pon- 
derous machinery; its absence results in wearing 
and waste and disaster. 

Sympathy is the soul of philanthropy. Some 
modern Pharisees give to be seen of men, but 
substantial humanitarian enterprises spring out of 
real devotion to our fellows. Some desultory 
work may be accomplished for the needy by 
persons controlled by fad and caprice, but sys- 
tematic and permanent efforts must have the in- 
visible backing of hearts of loving sympathy. 
Cicero, in one of his orations, apologizes for his 
interest in a slave, but so mighty a transforma- 
tion has been wrought by the heart of Christ 
upon recent centuries that sympathy for the 



SYMPATHY 183 

oppressed characterizes all lives and nations over 
which the cross of Jesus holds fascinating sway. 

The great Leland Stanford, Jr., University 
would never have been had not the soul of a rich 
man been touched by his own great sorrow into 
deep sympathy for the multitudes of bereaved 
ones about him. Sympathy will awaken from 
lethargy the better natures of men. There are 
always some chords in the hearts of even the 
most degenerate of men which will respond. 
Severity, punishment, and ostracism may all fail, 
but sincere sympathy gains an entrance into the 
invisible citadel. Gough and Moody were won for 
sobriety and righteousness by sympathy; and so 
also were a mighty army of upright and useful men. 

Cordial sympathy will encourage many a falter- 
ing and discoiu-aged brother. Many aching hearts 
in darkest loneliness, because of inattentive friends, 
are groaning and wailing, ^'What, could you not 
watch with me?" These are days of overwhelm- 
ing discouragement for some men. A kind word, a 
warm pressure of the hand, a ^'God bless you" have 
wrought vigor to many a heart-burdened soul. 
Words and acts of love are well-nigh omnipotent in 
the transformation which they produce. Enthu- 
siastic followers are legion in prosperity, but adver- 
sity strengthens the devotion of true friends. 

So many gods, so many creeds, 

So many paths that wind and wind, 
When just the art of being kind 
. Is all this old world needs, 



184 A MAN'S REACH 

Sympathy finds out the law of Christ, and 
thereby the law of life. Sympathy is therefore a 
badge of discipleship. The law of life is, ^^Love 
one another as I have loved you/' The best re- 
ligion is the religion that most helps. Stoicism 
passed away and is forgotten except as now and then 
there may be a temporary recrudescence among a 
few pitiably deluded folk in America and among 
the pagan Hindus; but it will not last. It has no 
message for an age like this one. A wise man once 
said, "Let me write the songs of nations and 
others may make their laws," by which he meant 
that men are moved to noble actions more 
through their emotions than by the compul- 
sion of authority. There is an old maxim, 
^^ Pectus facit theologium'^ — The heart makes the 
preacher; and it is just as true that the heart 
makes the man; a man without a heart is a 
manikin. 

John Stuart Mill was lamentably at fault when 
he stated that selfishness would control every- 
thing for the public good. That is a false ethical 
principle. It may be true as an economic doc- 
trine that '^potential competition'' will maintain 
a safe equilibrium in manufacture and trade, 
giving rise to the old adage, "Competition is the 
life of trade" ; but in ideal living it is not a balance 
between good and evil which should be sought; 
the good should greatly preponderate the bad. 
Hence sympathy, and not selfishness, should pre- 
vail among men. There should be cooperation, 



SYMPATHY 185 

not competition; and men should be compeers, 
and not competitors. 

Sympathy renders great blessings to the gen- 
erous giver. Large as is the benefit which accrues 
to the recipient, greater benedictions rest upon 
the noble heart from which sympathy is freely 
extended. There is an enlargement of soul, a 
lengthening of vision, a widening of influence. 
The giver is loved and honored by his fellow 
men. Lincoln and Patrick Henry possessed the 
genius of statesmen, but their strong characters 
were enshrined in sympathy. As the President 
of his country, and as the governor of his State, 
these two great men are found in the galaxy of 
patriots, and possessing tender and devoted 
hearts, they are immortalized among their fel- 
lows. The giver of true sympathy is trusted and 
inspired by his God. John Summerfield's short 
life of twenty-seven, years was long enough to 
leave a sweet fragrance in the earth which will 
ever abide. His delicate frame seemed unable to 
support the far-reaching enterprises in which his 
loving heart was determined to participate. 

There are curative qualities in kindness. Sym- 
pathy will awaken the dormant better natures of 
men. They are transforming criminals to-day by 
kindness. Instead of dungeons, maledictions, 
stripes, bloodhounds, armed guards, and stock- 
ades, the prisoners are allowed to work out of 
doors. They are trusted, and they respect the 
trust. Instead of keeping them indoors at the 



186 A MAN'S REACH 

laborious and confining tasks of ^ ^pulling brushes," 
where their physical health is undermined, and 
their whole nature craves stimulants to which 
they return as soon as they are freed, they are 
put to work on farms, where they serve in dairies, 
raise vegetables and meat for the city hospitals 
and county infirmaries, and hay for the stock in 
police and fire departments. Thus they are 
treated like men and become men, and, renewed 
in physical strength, are prepared to return to 
the battlefields of life. Kindness has all the 
curative qualities of a specific. 

Not long since, I saw a model of a so-called 
home, a tenement house in a congested part of 
a great city. There was a family of seven, the 
father, mother, and five children; and, except 
the baby, they were all busy making goods in a 
room twelve feet square. When they slept at 
night the father and mother and baby occupied 
the bed, one child slept on the table, one on two 
chairs, and two others on a hard pallet on the 
floor. As a rich lady passed by this exhibit she 
was heard to say: ^'It's all horribly exaggerated." 
A little later two boys from the slums stood 
looking at it, when one said to the other, ^^Gee, 
Jimmie, that ain't no thin' to it." 

A httle hfeless boy was picked up from under 
the feet of prancing horses in the streets of one 
of our large cities. The officers found in his 
pocket a little advertising card, which stated 
that if this card were found on the person of any 



SYMPATHY 187 

one that was killed, five thousand dollars would 
be paid to the person named thereon. And then, 
written in a child's hand, were the words, "Money 
to be paid to my mother — Mrs. Smith, widow, 
10 DeviFs Alley.'' Hastening to that number, 
the officers found the widowed mother of the 
deceased boy surrounded by a family of children, 
whom she was trying to support. 

It was believed that the gallant little fellow had 
found this spurious insurance card, and had will- 
ingly, like a little martyr, sacrificed his young life, 
thinking that the large sum of money would go to 
his mother to help her care for her children. The 
attention of religious societies was called to this 
sad case, and generous provision was made for the 
mother and her children. 

Humanity's great heart is hurt, but true sym- 
pathy will cure. General O. O. Howard was an 
earnest Christian man and continually devoted 
to the religious life of his soldiers. He held fre- 
quent meetings among the men and anxiously 
sought for their conversion. Among his men was 
an old teamster who was profane and irreligious. 
One day the General went to the teamster's part 
of the camp, and had a long talk with him, in 
which he said: "I want to see you converted. 
Won't you come to the mourners' bench at the 
next service?" The teamster rubbed his head 
thoughtfully for a moment and then replied: 
"General, I'm plumb willin' to be converted, 
but if I am, seein' that everyone else has got 



188 A MAN'S REACH 

religion, who in blue blazes is goin' to drive the 
mules?" 

But men are not mules, and all efforts to drive 
men to sacred duty and high destiny lamentably 
fail. Sympathetic invitations and kindly re- 
monstrances will in the end reach and subdue 
the coarser natiu-es and awaken the noblest 
impulses which may for a time have been be- 
numbed by misfortune and vice. 

A young man wrote to Herbert Spencer, in- 
quiring, "What do you think of Christ?' ' and re- 
ceived the reply, "I do not know anything about 
Christ; I have no time to study about him." 
What, Spencer! Could ye not watch with him 
one hour? The entire philosophy of the agnostic 
cannot forgive a sin, reform a sinner, smooth a 
dying pillow, dry a tear of sorrow, or help a fal- 
tering brother. If we would be truly sympa- 
thetic, let us make the acquaintance of the Man 
of Sorrows, who was acquainted with grief. The 
world needs philosophy and demonstration and 
logic, but each of these will avail nothing to 
mankind unless it is linked with a deep and 
abiding interest in our fellow man. Love for 
Jesus Christ produces love for our fellows. Do 
not the Scriptures say, "He that hateth his 
brother abideth in death"? Yes; and he that 
loveth his brother abideth in life. 

At one time, when General Booth wanted to 
send a cablegram as a New Year's message to 
all the Salvation Army posts throughout the 



SYMPATHY 189 

world, in the interest of economy and brevity he 
chose a single word which incorporated in two 
short syllables the mighty, all-inclusive spirit of 
the gospel of Christ; it was '' Others." 

The hour is coming when this our holy church 
Shall melt away in ever-widening walls, 
And be for aU mankind; and in its place 
A mightier church shall come, whose covenant word 
Shall be the deeds of love. Not "Credo" then; 
"Amo" shall be the password through its gates. 
Man shall not ask his brother any more, 
"BeHevest thou?" but, "Lovest thou?" till all 
Shall answer at God's altar, "Lord, I love." 
For hope may anchor, faith may steer, but love, 
Great love alone, is captain of the soul. 

— Ldber Amoris. 

I have heard of a certain organization whose 
motto was ''Others first!" And the members got 
into a bitter struggle, and finally disbanded be- 
cause of contention as to who should be president. 
How lightly sometimes our ideals rest upon us, 
and how perfunctorily do we discharge our 
duties! 

Once a gentleman expostulated with a child for 
carrying a big baby in his arms, whereupon the 
knightly little fellow, with true chivalry, replied: 
''O, he is not heavy, he's my brother." A man 
once saw something moving toward him in the 
distant field which he took for a monster. As it 
came nearer he discovered it was a man, and 
when still nearer he recognized him as his brother. 
Two men walking along the streets of a city 



190 A MAN'S REACH 

simultaneously espied a piece of jewelry on the 
pavement. They reached for it and banged each 
other's heads. They arose, each violently in- 
dignant at the other, to find that they were 
brothers, and had not seen each other for twenty 
years. All the contentions and rivalries and 
competitions among men are between brothers. 
Let us cease our striving, for 'Ve be brethren." 

My precious mother saw a girl of twelve years 
carrying a large child of four, and gently said to 
her, ^^He is too heavy for you." The pert little 
maiden waited until she was at a safe distance, 
and then with flashing eye and shrill voice she 
called back: "Is it any of your business? Ain't he 
my brother? Didn't he stump his toe?" 

Ah, how many men have stubbed their toes 
in the rough pathway of life? If an injured man 
is sympathetically carried for a little while, he 
too will become a burden-bearer and custodian 
of humanity on the rocky highways of life. But 
there are many things upon which men stub 
their toes, stumblingblocks in the pathways of 
men, which ought to be removed. While we are 
trying to save men let us remove the menace. 
If men would reach a premiership, we must fill 
up the pitfalls. Let us preach salvation and 
practice total abstinence, but let us kill the devil 
and smash the saloon! 



XII 
REVERENCE 



191 



Henceforth, the majesty of God revere; 
Fear him and you have nothing else to fear. 

— Fordyce. 

But yesterday the word of Caesar might 

Have stood against the world; now lies he there, 

And none so poor to do him reverence. 

— Shakespeare. 

Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of 
it; and God smote him there for his error. — Old Testament. 



192 



CHAPTER XII 
REVERENCE 

God had given commandment to Moses to 
construct a sacred chest to be overlaid within 
and without with pure gold. It was to be sur- 
mounted with two cherubim of beaten gold. 
This beautiful casket was to be a receptacle for 
the Tables of Stone which Moses had received 
on the top of Mount Sinai, and was to be an 
altar of prayer which was to be kept in the midst 
of the people, for God had said, "There will I 
meet with thee.'^ God explicitly commanded 
that no hand should touch the ark of the covenant 
save the priest's, and rings and poles were pro- 
vided by which this holy vessel was to be carried. 

The Philistines came up against Israel and 
captured the ark and held it a captive for sixty 
years, when David conquered Philistia and 
builded a suitable place for the ark, and, with 
thirty thousand warriors, went down to the 
borders of the enemy's country and secured 
possession of the precious treasure. In the 
excitement and joyousness of this long-looked- 
for victory, Uzzah's mortal sin of irreverence was 
committed, which cost him his life, for God had 
explicitly commanded that none except the 
priest's hands should touch the sacred ark. 

193 



194 A MAN^S REACH 

In the days of prosperity irreverence grows 
most insidiously. When men feel secure in their 
own successes they are prone to forget the com- 
mands of God. We do not depend so helplessly 
on our heavenly Father when our achievements 
have given us greater confidence in ourselves. 
National and individual prosperity are at once 
our greatest danger and greatest security. In 
the frenzy of victory, as did Uzzah, so do we 
often commit acts of irreverence. 

There is danger that our greatest national sin 
shall be the sin of irreverence. The ancient story 
of Uzzah's act of desecration in placing his hand 
upon the holy ark of God is full of serious and 
important lessons which apply with solemn sig- 
nificance to our age and our country and our in- 
dividual citizenship. 

Sometimes it is fashionable to be irreverent. 
The Philistines, in transporting the ark, had 
placed it upon an oxcart; and when the Israelites 
were returning with the ark they followed the 
error of the Philistines and had the ark drawn by 
oxen instead of carried by the staves and rings, 
as God had peremptorily commanded. And even 
King David seems to have indulged in undigni- 
fied expressions of joy. One act of irreverence 
leads to another. And when the ark shook as the 
cart went over Nachon^s threshing floor, Uzzah 
forgetfully committed his serious offense. When 
the church allows the world to set its fashions, 
sacrileges disastrous and deplorable speedily fol- 



REVERENCE 195 

low. The first sin was in placing it upon the 
oxcart, and the second easily followed. 

Two other fruitful causes of irreverence are 
forgetfulness and famiharity. The ark had been 
in the house of Abinidab since the boyhood of 
his sons, Uzzah and Ahio, and they dared to 
take privileges with the sacred furniture. Fa- 
miharity sometimes breeds contempt. It is not 
discoverable that Uzzah was either malicious or 
willful, but he was heedless; and even so appar- 
ently a harmless sin as disobedience brought upon 
him the awful penalty. 

The influence of sacred things depends upon 
their sacredness being preserved. God could not 
control Israel without their respect and obedience, 
hence the suffering of Uzzah. No sin is more 
treacherous than irreverence. It decoys its vic- 
tims. It is like dry-rot in the ship's timbers. 
Irreverence slyly gains admittance where grosser 
evils would be easily repulsed. Satan is con- 
stantly busy trying to transform the sons of Levi, 
who serve at holy altars, into the sons of Eli. 

We must beware of the deceptive tendencies of 
famiharity, for when delicate respect for holy 
things is lost, then defilement and sacrilege easily 
enter. WTien reverence departs character cannot 
be retained, for character depends upon faith in 
and obedience to sacred things. At Belshazzar's 
feast, in the supposed impregnable city of Baby- 
lon, it was the towering crime of irreverence in 
defiling the sacred vessels of the temple worship 



196 A MAN'S REACH 

at Jerusalem that brought disaster and death to 
the dissolute young monarch. 

Ancient Babylon was a city of unparalleled 
magnificence. Its massive walls were fifty-six 
miles in circumference, three hundred and fifty 
feet high, and eighty-seven feet in thickness. 
Four chariots could be driven abreast upon them. 
The river Euphrates passed through the city. 
The Chaldean metropolis was a wilderness of 
architectural splendor, fragrant with the tropical 
luxuriance of the famous hanging gardens. Bel- 
shazzar, the young king, was ruling conjointly 
with his father, Nabonadius. He was the grand- 
son of Nebuchadnezzar, who, with the beautiful 
Semiramis, had given to Babylon its power and 
elegance. Cyrus, the Persian conqueror, was be- 
sieging Babylon and planning for its overthrow. 
The proud young Belshazzar, to show his con- 
fidence in his fortifications and fortresses, and to 
exhibit his indifference to Cyrus and his assault- 
ing army, gave a royal feast which had never 
been equaled in all the lavish expenditure of that 
opulent and extravagant empire. In the midst 
of the frenzy of Bacchanalian dissipation and 
revelry the dissolute young monarch furnished a 
climax for his feast by commanding that the 
gold and silver vessels which Nebuchadnezzar 
had brought from Jerusalem, and which had been 
used in the worship of the Most High God, should 
be brought in and used by this sacrilegious host 
of pagan libertines. Just as the daring young 



REVERENCE 197 

king was placing to his lips one of the golden 
chalices, once used in the temple worship, amid 
the tumultuous applause of his maudhn guests, 
there came a hand out of the black sleeve of the 
night, and, as the stars twinkled in the heavens 
above the open court of the banqueting hall, 
wrote on the palace walls: ''Thou art weighed in 
the balances and found wanting," and ''that 
night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, 
slain," for Cyrus, by changing the channel of 
the river, marched his host into the city on the 
dry bed of the Euphrates, and Babylon was 
overthrown — sacrificed on the altars of irrever- 
ence. 

Josephus says that in the closing scenes of 
Jerusalem, such were the sacrilegious practices of 
the people, that if the Romans had not destroyed 
the city, some dreadful judgment like that which 
befell Sodom would have come upon that city. 
Thus, indeed, have nations and cities and indi- 
viduals disappeared under the disintegrating proc- 
esses of irreverence. 

The church is a sacred vessel. Dedicated to the 
service of God, it should not be diverted into 
secular uses. -Jesus drove the merchants out of 
the courts of the temple, and as yet there has 
been no permission granted for their return. The 
sons of Aaron were devoured by the strange fire 
which they undertook to offer at the altars of the 
Lord; and similar results occur to-day in the 
consuming of holy instincts and respectful in- 



198 A MAN'S REACH 

clinations, when the Church of God is made a 
place of frolic and merchandising. 

The Bible is a most sacred vessel. There is not 
much danger of bibliolatry, but we need to be 
much on our guard lest the very availability of 
our Great Book shall cause it to be less appre- 
ciated. Things are often valued by us in pro- 
portion to the sacrifice which has been suffered 
for them. Homer has been translated into a 
score of modern languages; Shakespeare and Tol- 
stoy into thirty-three; and The Pilgrim's Progress 
into one hundred and eleven. The Bible, on the 
other hand, has been translated into five hundred 
and thirty languages. A gentleman placed a 
copy of the Gospel of Saint John on my desk the 
other day, and said it cost only two cents. It 
was in excellent type and neatly bound. 

During the days of the persecution of Diocle- 
tian many Christians surrendered their Bibles 
and the sacred utensils of worship, and in conse- 
quence lost their faith. When the Bible goes out 
of our lives our Christian character loses its chief 
support. 

A man whom I knew, in the presence of his 
family, once picked up a Bible, turned its pages 
carelessly for a few moments, and petulantly 
threw it down upon the table, saying, 'Tshaw! 
give me Shakespeare." Perhaps he never knew 
that the Bible was the acknowledged inspiration 
of the marvelous lines of Avon's greatest bard. 
It is certain no man ever prefers any other book 



REVERENCE 199 

who has discovered the extraordinary beauty and 
power of the Bible. We must vahantly defend 
the Bible against irreverence. It is the bulwark 
of our civilization — the foundation of liberty — 
the corner stone of truth. I submit whether we 
do not commit a serious offense against the sa- 
credness of the Book when we indulge in constant 
jokes and puns based upon the Scriptures. It 
cannot be anything less than sinful sacrilege to 
weave the holy personages and incidents of Bible 
history into ridiculous story. The Bible deals 
with most serious questions which involve the 
Hfe and death and weal and woe of the race, and 
do we not violate its sacred rights when we make 
it the basis of oiu- fun and laughter? This is a 
popular desecration, which, Hke Uzzah's sin, has 
been committed so long that it has not occurred 
to many people that they are unintentionally un- 
dermining the very Book which they desire most 
to defend. 

The Sabbath is a sacred vessel, a divinely 
instituted day for rest and worship and home. 
We cannot spare the Sabbath, but we cannot 
keep it if it is steadily allowed to become more 
and more a social and business day. All vices and 
enemies of our nation thrive best where the first 
day of the week is decreasingly reverenced. Din- 
ner and card parties and hilarious outings arranged 
for the Sabbath are direct attacks upon the se- 
curity of our republic. The perpetuity of a 
nation depends upon the reverence of the people. 



200 A MAN'S REACH 

When the temples are empty the walls of the 
citadel crumble. When the altars of worship are 
neglected virtue and purity are dethroned, a 
nation's protectors lose their courage and spirit 
of sacrifice, and there is speedy decline and fall. 
God has put himself on record as ready to cause 
those nations to '^ride upon the high places of the 
earth" which keep his Sabbaths. History fulfills 
in every century the curses of the Almighty which 
have rested upon those people who have de- 
stroyed his holy day. Why do we argue the 
question when he who runs may read? 

The human body is a sacred vessel. What a 
marvelous gift is the voice with its capabihties of 
music and speech. Alas that ever its powers are 
profaned! Consider too the tastes and appetites 
and muscular possibiHties and vital forces. What 
exquisite joys God has invested in the human 
body! But, desecrated and disregarded, how this 
body may become a bundle of clashing nerves, a 
prison-pen full of cruel and warring enemies. 
God's great apostle wrote, ^'If any man defile 
the temple of God," as the body is called, '^him 
shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, 
which temple ye are." The profanation of the 
human body occurs too frequently in many of the 
amusements and frivolities of our time. The 
human body is the most beautiful and ingenious 
thing among all God's creations. It is the supreme 
study of the artist and sculptor; and in its per- 
fection is man's highest ideal of beauty and grace. 



REVERENCE 201 

But the human body is exploited by a wicked 
and degenerate and mercenary age. Its tastes 
are depraved, its beauty is exposed, its divine 
purpose is prostituted for wicked ends, and its 
holy instincts are defiled — all for gain. Un- 
principled and bestial men for sordid advan- 
tage are willing to violate every law of modesty, 
purity, health, morals, and beauty. This is so 
brazenly done in the tainted theater that it is a 
wonder that any man, and especially any woman, 
who claims respectability, will attend its libidinous 
performances. This same condition is often found 
in the social functions of so-called polite society, 
and is the curse of the public dance hall. 

The alcohol habit is a crime against the body 
and the soul. The appalling depredations of the 
Uquor habit not only poison the physical centers 
of man's nature, but by it the moral forces are 
dulled and stupefied. The man who drinks suf- 
fers moral perversion, and, in the end, may de- 
generate into a moral pervert. Have you recalled 
how closely this licensed evil of the liquor traffic 
has been related to the assaults upon our nation's 
presidents? The conspirators who plotted against 
Abraham Lincoln's life made their headquarters in 
a saloon; and Wilkes Booth fortified himself with 
liquor before he fired the fatal shot, as did also 
Guiteau before he attacked Garfield in the railroad 
station in Washington. Czolgosz, who assassinated 
McKinley, was a son of a saloon keeper; and the 
murderous assailant of Roosevelt was an ex- 



202 A MAN'S REACH 

saloon keeper of New York city. If there were no 
other reason for stopping this damnable traffic, 
it would be sufficient that no President of our 
nation is safe. Is it not an irony of fate, and is it 
not a fateful and logical sequence, that the nation 
which licenses this murderous business should be 
again and again precipitated into abysses of woe 
and suffering by these tragic assaults and mar- 
tyrdoms? In all probability the Titanic would be 
afloat to-day, and its precious human freight 
landed in safe harbors, if a Sunday night's cham- 
pagne frivolity had not stupefied the crew of the 
unsinkable floating palace. So can strong drink 
sink our ship of state, and it will if we do not sum- 
marily stop its ravages. What colossal idiots 
we are as a people for not coming forward as one 
mighty man of God and severing the head of this 
vaunting and murderous Goliath of Gath. 

The human mind — soul — is a sacred vessel. A 
man is not any better than his thoughts. ''Keep 
thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the 
issues of life." Man is the upward-looking animal. 
His mind has been created with powers of con- 
centration and analysis that he might find out 
God. When man uses his faculties against his 
Creator he has desecrated a sacred vessel. Man's 
logical faculty and powers of invention are often 
diverted to the injury instead of the elevation of 
men. A prostituted printing press is doing much 
in 'Vampire literature" to violate the human mind. 
A bad book or an immodest picture is a poisoned 



REVERENCE 203 

arrow driven into the mind, from which an abso- 
lute recovery is not possible. Each must revere 
his own mind and shield himself from the ten 
thousand inimical influences that are intended to 
thrive on the spoliation of pure natures. How 
empty would be the playhouses, and how bank- 
rupt many of the publishers, if the American peo- 
ple would suddenly refuse to be any longer the 
receptacles for the filth and corruption of many 
of the popular books and most of the popular 
dramas! The inculcation of reverence for all 
high and sacred ideals, patriotic and religious, is 
the greatest opportunity which lies before us as a 
nation to-day. 

Among the annals of the Civil War, it is told 
that one day the prisoners at Andersonville were 
called together by the keeper, and told that if they 
would enlist in the Confederate army they would 
escape the sufferings of prison life. Soon they 
would be able to go home, for the Union armies 
were being defeated, and the war would quickly 
end. Then a half-starved man said: ''Mr. Officer, 
may I speak a word?" Permission being given, 
that shadow of a man stepped to the front, faced 
his comrades, and exclaimed: ''Attention, squad, 
right flank, back to death! March!" The com- 
mand was instantly obeyed, not a man faltering, 
and with resolute step those men marched back 
to their quarters, and some of them to death. 

If we are faithful unto duty, and faithful unto 
death, we shall wear a crown of eternal life. 



XIII 
APPRECIATION 



205 



On that best portion of a good man's life, his Httle, nameless, 
unremembered acts of kindness and of love. — Wordsworth. 

Little deeds of kindness, little words of love, 
Help to make earth happy like the heaven above. 

— Julia A. Fletcher. 

How sweet and gracious even in common speech 
Is that fine sense which men call Courtesy! 
Wholesome as air and genial as the light, 
Welcome in every clime as breath of flowers, 
It transmutes aUens into trusting friends. 
And gives its owner passport round the globe. 

— James T. Fields. 



206 



CHAPTER XIII 
APPRECIATION 

The most pathetic, powerful, dramatic, and fa- 
miliar of all the stories of Jesus is the parable of 
the prodigal son. It is the tale of two boys reared 
in the same home, surrounded by the same in- 
fluences, and yet as different in their tastes and 
inclinations and ambitions as if born of different 
parents on opposite sides of the earth. When the 
younger son reached his majority he fulfilled his 
often expressed purpose of breaking loose from 
the restraints and limitations of home and going 
forth to see the world. He would go into "sl far 
country." The ^^far country" has always had en- 
trancing interest to the youth. 

The things at a distance are invested with fab- 
ulous beauty and wonder. "Distance ever lends 
enchantment" ; especially is this true to young men 
of adventurous and restless spirit. The "far coun- 
try" may be no better, it may be no worse than 
the near country; but if the spirit of discontent, 
or dissatisfaction with restraint, or desire to aban- 
don oneself to life's excesses and frivolities, is the 
inspiring cause of the journey, then the "far coun- 
try" is altogether the worst place for the young 
man to go. After journeying around the earth, 
and exchanging exuberant youth for enervating 

207 



208 A MAN'S REACH 

old age, Sir Launfal found the Holy Grail at his 
own palace wall. There are always want and 
famine in any country where men "waste their 
substance with riotous living. '^ 

The sirens in the "far country" await the com- 
ing of their victims, and the path from plenty to 
want, from integrity to dishonor, is short and 
steep ; and no one travels it so rapidly as the young 
man of good training and of refinement, who, in spite 
of his teaching and good examples, foolishly deter- 
mines to find out for himself what are the treach- 
ery and deceit of the far country. "When he had 
spent all" — all his money, all his character, all his 
bumptiousness, all his self-respect, all his bragga- 
docio — having debased himself by indulging the 
tendencies of his bestial nature, the young man 
was willing to become a hireling and go into the 
fields to care for the swine. It was the most 
menial and degrading employment, but any kind 
of work was better than starvation. Even the 
husks which the swine ate were preferable to 
death, and he was in better company with the 
swine than with libertines and harlots; and the 
prodigal was afraid to die. At length the en- 
chantment of the far country was gone and he 
"came to himself." An insane infatuation had 
apparently governed his downfall, but he finally 
"came to himself." He had something left to 
come to; everybody has; he had not squandered 
all. Even men who persist in their infatuation 
for evil do not become totally depraved. There 



APPRECIATION 209 

is some divinity left that will not be defiled. 
This young man had gone many lengths, but 
something of his nobility still remained. 

There is marvelous elasticity and forbearance 
in parental love. "When he was a great way off 
his father saw him." An affectionate and even 
sumptuous welcome was extended to the prodigal 
by his father, who had not ceased to pray for the 
return of his wandering son. Let it be remem- 
bered that God and society more quickly forgive 
than the man can forgive himself. So long as 
the prodigal lives he will never forgive himself 
for his foolishness; neither can nature forgive 
him, for the wounds and taints which sin has 
made are indelible. Herein lies the tragic fallacy 
of "wild oats," a deadly theory to which no wise 
man should subscribe. 

As the welcome home feast was in progress, 
and the stately mansion was filled with guests, 
the elder brother returned from the field. Some- 
body has surely blundered! How has it hap- 
pened that messengers were not sent to this son, 
who had been faithful to his duties somewhere 
on the estate? He seems to have been overlooked, 
and needs to be informed as he approaches the 
house by a servant what is the occasion of the 
feasting in the old home. "He was angry and 
would not go in," which surely was not the good 
part of a man toward his erring brother; and 
when the happy father urged him to join in the 
festivities he refused, saying, "Lo, these many 



no A MAN^S REACH 

years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at 
any time thy commandment," and then he re- 
minded his father that, in contrast with this 
fatted calf now being eaten by the guests, never 
even so much as a kid had been offered to him 
to make merry with his friends. Thereupon, the 
father, in endearing words, said to him, ''My 
child [teknon, in contrast with uios], thou art 
ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was 
meet that we should make merry, and be glad; 
for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; 
and was lost, and is found." 

There is, of course, no defense of the indifference 
of the elder brother, but the incident affords the 
opportunity of emphasizing the fine grace of 
appreciation. All men need encouragement and 
sometimes those who are carrying the heaviest 
burdens, and have long-standing reputation for 
fidelity, receive the least approval. The elder 
brother was entitled to something which he had 
not received. There is a great amount of crit- 
icism and faultfinding, but altogether too little 
of appreciation. 

It is to our credit to have a welcome and sym- 
pathy for the prodigal, but let us not forget to 
now and then speak in approval of the sturdy, 
faithful men, who, like wheel-horses, draw the 
heaviest part of the load and do not turn from the 
path of honor and industry to explore the ''far 
country." One noble man who refuses to depart 
from paths of integrity is of more value to the 



APPRECIATION 211 

world than ninety-nine prodigals. With all his 
faults the elder was a better son to his father 
than the younger. We must not place a premium 
on prodigality by overmuch sentiment: not kids 
for fidelity and fatted calves for prodigals, but 
the best there is always for those who are faithful. 
Alabaster boxes and flowers for the living — for 
the dead also, if there are enough for both; but 
certainly for those who are bravely fighting 
against the influences which destroy character 
and happiness. Better a Cecil Bruner rose for the 
living than a wagon-load of American Beauties after 
the battle is over. It is when a man is struggling 
to make a fife that he needs the helpful word. 

There is a vast amount of unjust and unfair 
criticism and faultfinding in the world. Macaulay 
declared that his severest critics were those who 
had themselves failed in hterature. Yes, any 
shallow-pated misanthrope can criticize. Vol- 
taire sneered at Dante's ^^Inferno,'' and said 
' 'Hamlet" was the work of a drunken savage. 
Waller said of "Paradise Lost'': "The old blind 
schoolmaster had published a tedious poem; if 
its length be not considered a merit, it has no 
other." Sidney Smith dipped his pen in gall and 
called William Carey a "consecrated cobbler," 
and ridiculed Wesley and Whitefield and Fletcher 
as a "nest of vermin." Tennyson lost ten years of 
his life by reason of lack of appreciation. Shelley 
met with nothing but severe critics. At length, 
after writing "Adonais," he said: "There! Let 



212 A MAN'S REACH 

the critics say what they please. I know that is 
poetry." When they bombarded DisraeH with 
jeers at the close of his maiden speech in Parlia- 
ment, he flung back to them a daring prophecy 
which the future fulfilled: ^The time will cqme 
when you will hear me!'' And those same cruel 
critics were willing to be his cringing sycophants 
when he became prime minister of the British 
empire. Sometimes extremes of unjust criticism 
awaken in a man all his slumbering faculties, and 
he puts forth his utmost endeavor to make still 
more untrue the vicious assaults of his foes. 

God pity the man who becomes cynical. He 
can never hurt anyone so much as himself. Every 
bitter thing which he says reacts upon himself, 
until he becomes utterly despicable in his own 
sight, and wholly impossible and intolerable to 
men about him. His old friends slip away from 
him or die; he makes no new friends, and at 
length dwells apart in the midst of a world teeming 
with people, in as utter isolation as if he were 
alone on a distant island. 

Be patient with the faultfinder — for he will 
soon eliminate himself. God pity the man who 
can see nothing to admire in his fellows. His 
heart does not beat in sympathy with the man 
who struggles, and he soon loses interest in every- 
thing beautiful. His sunsets are either too bright 
or too cloudy; his music is either too classic or too 
simple; his poems are either too profound or too 
prolix; his sermons are either too long or too short; 



APPRECIATION 213 

his flowers are either too abundant or too scanty; 
his winters are too cold and his summers are too 
hot; his springs are too wet and his autumns are too 
cloudy; his coffee is too strong, his soup is too hot; 
his meat is too rare, and his eggs are too hard. God 
have mercy on the people who have to live with 
such a man. He is so despicable that he does not 
even enjoy his own society. 

It is hard to be patient with the man who 
thinks meanly of his fellow men. But such a 
man is himself the greatest loser. Think of the 
lofty impulses of which he deprives himself. He 
has lost the sense of proportion, and cannot know 
the infinite splendor of God nor the infinite pos- 
sibility of man. He loses his place in the proces- 
sion of goodly things. The world to him is going 
wrong, and he has not even the good sense to be 
still. ' He does not succeed himself, and growls 
at those who do. Alas, poor man, poor man! 
The world is sorry for him, but he is incorrigibly 
pessimistic. 

The world belongs to the man who with hopeful 
expectancy believes in God, his fellows, and him- 
self. A critic once said to Turner, the great 
painter, as he viewed critically one of the artist's 
masterful sunsets: "Why, Mr. Turner, I never 
saw any such lights and color in nature as you 
put on your canvas." ''Don't you wish you 
could?" replied Turner. ''As for me, I never 
hope to match with pigments the glory that I 
see in the sky." 



214 A MAN'S REACH 

There is an old maxim which says, "The cynic 
knows the price of everything and the value of 
nothing." A man visited an art gallery, and was 
most impressed by the massive gold frames. 
Churchill says of certain literary critics, 

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, 
They damn those authors they have never read. 

And Byron rimed caustically of some of his 
critics, of whom he said, 

They have hackneyed jokes which they got by rote, 
With just enough of learning to misquote. 

So the severest critics of parents and children 
are those who never had any children. The 
worst critics of magistrates are political mal- 
contents. The meanest critics of ministers are 
those who have failed in the ministry, and the 
sharpest sermon critics are those who would not 
dare to reduce their criticisms to writing because 
of the misspelled words. Critics are those who 
have lamentably failed in the very field in which 
they arrogate to themselves superior wisdom. "It 
is much easier to be critical than to be correct." 

Man's inhumanity to man 
Makes countless thousands mourn. 

The meanest thing I ever heard said of women 
was expressed by a woman. It was this: "My 
chief compensation for being a woman is that I 
shall never have to marry one." That woman goes 
unloved by men until this day, for a man cannot 



APPRECIATION 215 

love a woman who hates women. The meanest 
fact that ever came under my notice was told me 
of a certain steamboat owner in Pittsburgh. He 
fell into a swollen river one day. At great peril 
to his own life a deck-hand saved the life of his 
employer, who never gave the man any token of 
his gratitude, nor ever even thanked him for 
his rescue, and on the next pay-day discharged 
him, giving as his only reason that he did not 
want anybody around to whom he felt any 
obligation. 

Jesus Christ and his apostles were not economi- 
cal of their use of appreciation and praise. Jesus 
said of John the Baptist: ^^ Among them that are 
born of women there hath not risen a greater than 
John the Baptist.'' Of Nathanael, he said, ''An 
Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!'' Of Peter, 
''Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona." And who 
can ever forget how graciously our Lord com- 
forted the poor widow, as in her poverty she 
shrank from casting her meager gift of two mites 
into the treasury, when he said, "This poor widow 
hath cast in more than they all"? And the most 
exquisite eulogium ever pronounced was when 
Jesus said to the woman with the alabaster box, 
as he heard the cruel criticisms of covetous men, 
"Let her alone; she hath done what she could." 

Appreciation is indeed a Christian grace to be 
cultivated. 

"Words fitly spoken are like apples of gold in 
pictures of silver." When there was much criti- 



216 A MAN'S REACH 

cism of Abraham Lincoln he repHed, using the 
figure of Blondin, who about that time was 
crossing the Niagara gorge on a tight rope: '^Gen- 
tlemen, I am carrying the fortunes of this nation 
over the chasm of civil war. Be silent and pray 
until I get across." 

Every normal man will do his best in an at- 
mosphere of encouragement. Daniel Webster 
said he never spoke in such an atmosphere of ap- 
preciation as when he made his famous reply to 
Hayne. The great orator never surpassed that 
masterful effort. We must remember that while 
^'applause is the end and aim of weak minds/' it 
is likewise ^^the spur of noble minds." It awakens 
one's resentful spirit when we remember that so 
little did the publishers appreciate ^Taradise 
Lost/' '^the noblest monument of English verse/' 
that its inspired author received only ten pounds 
for his immortal labors. 

Seven cities contend for Homer dead 

Through which the Hving Homer begged his bread. 

We should talk up our religion, our homes, our 
city, our friends, our country. The things we 
talk up — go up! The old world needs to be lifted 
up. 

Jesus said, "And I, if I be lifted up from the 
earth, will draw all men unto me." We must 
help Christ in this lif ting-up business. Jesus was 
lonesome when he was on the earth. "It is lone- 
some to be a God!" 



APPRECIATION 217 

Some months ago a rich young man dehber- 
ately left his aristocratic home in Madison Avenue, 
New York city, and went down to hve in a set- 
tlement in the slums. Some charged it up to 
eccentricity, but he explained it by saying, ''My 
object is to quit being selfish/' Selfishness is at 
once our most insidious and colossal besetting sin. 
Character is the fine art of giving up. 



XIV 
THE GOSPEL OF REST AND HEALTH 



219 



There are three wicks, you know, to the lamp of a man's Uf e — 
brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes 
out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a little, and 
out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, 
and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centers of 
flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness. — Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. 

Come ye yourselves apart, and rest a while. — Jesus. 

The toils of honor dignify repose. — Hoole. 



220 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE GOSPEL OF REST AND HEALTH 

Continuous surprises are in store for the 
student of the Bible; its truths instruct and arouse. 
Here one learns of the gospel of peace, the gospel 
of purity, the gospel of beauty, the gospel of 
brotherly kindness, the gospel of work, the gospel 
of rest, and also of the gospel of health. Jesus 
Christ was interested in the strong man, the wise 
man, the sick man, the sinful man, the working- 
man; and he did not forget the tired man. Once 
he said, ^'Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest"; and again 
he m"ged his disciples to accompany him into a 
desert place and "rest a while." 

There is a divine provision made for rest. The 
night follows the day, the darkness the light, 
and sleep comes with its sweet restorative power. 
God himself rested after six days of labor, and 
set apart and hallowed the Sabbath — the word 
''Sabbath" means ''rest." Work is said to be 
worship, but so is rest worship, for rest is indis- 
pensable to work. Rest is a physical necessity. 
Valuable draught horses are regularly rested one 
day in seven. It kills them to work every day. 
Sheep drovers found that if they rested their 

their flocks on the Sabbath, they reached the 

221 



^^2 A MAN^S REACH 

markets before the herders who pushed right on. 
A motorman in Los Angeles died of overwork. 
He had worked a thousand successive days, with 
only two days of rest. 

The engineers on the Empire State Express 
are required to rest each alternate day because 
of the great strain on their nerve energies to run 
the fastest regular train in the world. He who 
works should rest; it is a logical and necessary 
antithesis. The subject of the conservation of 
health is a patriotic and religious as well as a per- 
sonal problem. The problem of national and 
moral efficiency is bound up in the health and 
physical vigor of the individual citizen. 

When Emerson wrote, ^^Give me health and a 
day and I will make the pomp of emperors ridic- 
ulous, '^ he meant to place the princely crown of 
character and achievement upon the brow of the 
healthy man or woman, for '^mental, moral, and 
spiritual culture are the highest product of health 
cultivation." Not only is a strong mind to be 
found in a strong body, but there too should be 
found a strong moral force — a true character. 
Disease almost invariably produces some moral 
obliquity. 

Whatever improves health adds to the length 
and efficiency of individual life. '^Hygiene, the 
youngest of the biological studies, repudiates the 
outworn doctrine that mortality is fatality, and 
must exact a regular and inevitable sacrifice at its 
present rate year after year. Instead of this 



GOSPEL OF REST AND HEALTH £23 

fatalistic creed we now have the assurance of 
Pasteur that 'It is within the power of man to rid 
himself of every parasitic disease/ '^ If man will 
come up to his high privileges, he will see the 
day when both poverty and disease shall be 
abolished. 

The best preventive of disease is rest properly 
taken, combined with exercise. We are constantly 
facing the prodigious folly of men about us who 
''lose their health in the pursuit of wealth and 
then pass the remnant of their days spending 
their wealth to win back their health." This 
great waste of personal energy can be stopped by 
rest plentifully and regularly taken. It is stated 
by reliable authorities that undue fatigue is the 
cause of ninety per cent of disease. Fatigue im- 
pairs the power of the body to resist disease. 
Recently there came to my hand a copy of Pro- 
fessor Irving Fisher's report to the United States 
Senate on national vitality. Professor Fisher oc- 
cupies the chair of political economy at Yale 
University. After showing conclusively that al- 
cohol and tobacco increase fatigue, and that a 
diet in which too much protein is found will cer- 
tainly greatly increase fatigue, he says: "The 
economic waste from undue fatigue is probably 
much greater than the waste from serious illness. 
We have seen that the average serious illness per 
capita is usually about two weeks each year. 
This is about four per cent of the year. Ex- 
pressed differently, about four per cent of the 



224 A MAN^S REACH 

population is constantly sick. That is about 
three million people, at a cost in care and loss of 
wages of about one billion dollars annually. On 
the other hand, the number that suffer partial 
disability through undue fatigue certainly con- 
stitute the great majority of the population. No 
observer can fail to conclude that this is true of 
the American working, business, and professional 
classes, and the latest word among the students 
of school hygiene is that it is true to a large extent 
even among children. If, therefore, we assume 
that only fifty per cent of the population is suf- 
fering some impairment of its best powers through 
undue fatigue, we are on safe ground. The 
relatively slight impairment of efficiency due to 
overfatigue leads to more serious impairment. 
Just as minor ailments prove to have an unsus- 
pected importance when considered as gateways 
to serious illness, so the inefficiency from fatigue 
is vested with great significance as the first step 
toward minor ailments. A typical succession of 
events is first fatigue, then colds, then tuberculosis, 
then death. Prevention, to be effective, must 
begin at the beginning.'' 

Rest is also a mental necessity. A leading 
physician says men no longer die; they kill them- 
selves. Overwork produces worry, and worry 
kills. "Worried to death" might be a truthful 
epitaph for many tombs. The memory in its 
retentiveness, the will in its vigor, the mind in its 
clearness and logical faculty, all need rest. A 



GOSPEL OF REST AND HEALTH 225 

tired body produces a corresponding enervation 
in the intellect. 

Rest is a religious necessity. It takes time and 
strength to pray, and time to be kind, and time 
to worship — in fact, time to be a Christian. 
^'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" is 
not an arbitrary command; it is indispensable. 
The Sunday is as valuable to man in working out 
his personal and material ambitions as it is a 
precaution for the defense and development of 
sturdy character. 

Leisure is one of life's greatest blessings. 'They 
had no leisure so much as to eat" is not only found 
in the Bible, but it is a faithful comment upon 
nearly all the busy lives about us. Men and 
women have a right to restful leisure, and will 
live longer and be happier if they plan for it. 
Gladstone spent his leisure in translating Greek 
and Latin and in chopping down forest trees. 
Salisbury rested with chemistry, and had quite 
a complete laboratory in his own home. We 
ought to have an avocation as well as a vocation. 
Leisure for reading, conversing, and meditating 
will minister to a strengthening of mind and body, 
an enlargement of our sympathies, and an en- 
richment of our spiritual natures. The greatest 
slaves in America to-day are the successful men. 
They are unwilling to let go. They think they are 
doing the driving, but they are being driven to 
death. 

Jesus went apart to rest a while in the wil- 



226 A MAN'S REACH 

derness and again in the mountains of Galilee. 
Paul spent three years in Arabia in restful and 
studious solitude. Peter disappeared for a long 
time from public view. John retired to Patmos 
and received his celestial revelation. Con- 
trast with these the enforced exile of Napoleon 
at Saint Helena, banished for the peace of the 
world. 

So once I went to beautiful Santa Catalina 
Island for rest and play. Play keeps the boy 
alive in the man, and that means exuberant 
health. Catalina is an enchanting spot — unique 
among the most picturesque places of the earth. 
It is an island twenty-three miles long and from 
one half to eight miles wide — in the shape of a 
mason's trowel, containing fifty thousand acres. 
It is eighteen miles from the mainland — out in 
the rolling Pacific, and is like a great ship at sea. 
Its submarine gardens, viewed through glass- 
bottomed boats, are the most famous in the 
world. It is the angler's paradise, as its fishing is 
unequaled in any sea. 

Its climate is the most equable because the 
mountain range along the western coast protects 
from the prevailing winds. Its hills and moun- 
tains, rising in simple grandeur from the blue 
edges of the sea, lure the visitor to their graceful 
summits and silent canyons; and over all is a 
cloudless sky, which, like an inverted chalice, 
pours forth its radiant beauty. Then there is the 
billowy sea, which with rhythmic cadences rolls 



GOSPEL OF REST AND HEALTH 227 

against the island's rocky foundation, filling every 
bay and estuary with its purple flood and its 
orchestral melodies. Wild goats have their 
haunts in the shaded defiles. The bald eagles 
dwell among the lofty crags, and huge ravens 
with wings as black as midnight are ready to 
feed any hungry Elijah. These ominous birds 
were revered as sacred by the aborigines, and to 
this day suffer no harm. Mocking birds, wrens, 
finches, turtledoves, and humming birds join in 
the oratorios of praise to the good God of beau- 
tiful nature. 

This magic spot was discovered by Cabrillo, a 
daring Spanish navigator, in 1542. When he 
sailed into its grateful land-locked harbors he 
here found a tribe of Indians who were amiable 
and unwarlike, and wore skins and dwelt in caves. 
There are still some traces of these early habita- 
tions, and many mortars and pestles and musical 
instruments and implements have been found, in- 
dicating the domestic and industrial instincts of 
these former dwellers. When Viscaino arrived in 
1602 he renamed the island, which Cabrillo had 
called San Salvador, and the Indians Pimugna, 
Santa Catalina, after the saint day of his arrival. 
Viscaino described the people as being very intel- 
ligent and as most skillful in making arrows and 
spears and long ceremonial clubs. Recently a 
rude flute was found by some workmen in their 
excavations. It was made of the leg-bone of a 
deer and set in with mosaics of the beautiful 



228 A MAN'S REACH 

abalone shells. The mortars and olios were made 
of the hard serpentine rock found in a quarry 
which is now called Empire Landing. In the 
diary of Don Miguel Costanso, who visited the 
island in 1767, it was stated that the inhabitants 
had great pride in their handiwork. It was their 
custom to place specimens of their handiwork 
upon the graves of the deceased, that the memory 
of their skill and application might be perpetuated. 
It is not to be wondered at if these aborigines 
were more peaceful and civilized than their near- 
est neighbors on the mainland, for they dwelt 
here in this wonderful paradise with its fruitful 
valleys and sheltered coves, away from the battle 
and turmoil of a clashing world. 

Catalina once belonged to Philip III of Spain. 
Later it was a Spanish grant to some conqueror. 
It was still later ceded by Mexico to Governor 
Pio Pico. It was at length purchased by James 
Lick, and is now owned by the Banning Brothers, 
of Los Angeles. There are no doubt rich silver 
deposits upon the island, but they are somewhat 
inaccessible for profitable mining. 

I have traveled over many seas and tarried for 
a season under many skies, but nowhere has 
earth seemed so real and beautiful, and heaven so 
divine and accessible as at Santa Catalina. There 
is a conspiracy of natural beauty and hospitality; 
and peace and contentment rise like sweet in- 
cense from land and sea. The wind is soft and 
velvety, and the sunshine cordial and indulgent; 



GOSPEL OF REST AND HEALTH 229 

and those nights are most enchanting when the 
full moon casts its silver sheen upon the quiet 



One Sabbath morning I went alone to pray in 
an isolated canyon. I followed the silver thread 
of a mountain stream until I came to a rhythmical 
waterfall, which I immediately dedicated as a 
sacred place of worship. All nature was vocal 
with notes of praise to God the Creator. There 
was the musical murmur of the water as it crept 
softly along its channels of granite. There was 
the hum of bees among the new blossoms in the 
waving boughs; and the two minor notes of the 
black ravens as they soared against a blue sky. 
There was the chirp of the crickets in the fresh 
green grass, and the muffled flutter of the quail 
as they sought other places of shelter. There 
were the songs of the vivacious mocking birds, so 
full of luscious music that their notes never cease, 
whether on the wing or in the feathered nesting 
place, whether at the somber hour of midnight or 
the breaking dawn, or when the sunbeams have 
reached their blazing meridian. And ever and 
anon, from distant hillsides were heard the plain- 
tive bleating of the flocks, and the strangely 
human cry of a lost or lonely lambkin, and the 
quick response of the still more lonely and vigilant 
mother sheep. 

Over all was the cerulean sky, and everywhere 
about me, as palpable as the atmosphere — as real 
as the velvety breezes that fanned my cheek, as 



230 A MAN'S REACH 

secure as the perpetual rock which furnished my 
improvised altar of prayer — was God! 

Go abroad 
Upon the paths of nature, and when all 
Its voices whisper, and its silent things 
Are breathing the deep beauty of the world, 
Kneel at its simple altar, and the God, 
Who hath the living waters, will be there. 

Yes, God was there in one of nature's Holy of 
Holies; and I approached him through Jesus Christ 
his Son, my Elder Brother; and I talked with him 
and praised and prayed. In that desert place I 
was apart with Christ, and ' 'rested a while." I 
seemed to hear a voice saying, 'Take off thy 
shoes from off thy feet, for the place on which 
thou standest is holy ground." I obeyed; and new 
visions of Christ and truth and duty and humanity 
burst upon me; and fresh assurances of divine 
grace and power filled my heart with courage and 
hope and reposeful faith. As in the picturesque 
haunts of Midian Moses received his divine com- 
mission, so once more I seemed to hear the voice 
of God in gentle, commanding tones sending me 
back to my happy labors for him and for humanity. 

Santa Catalina is one of nature's most eloquent 
apocalypses. If one would find renewed physical 
vigor and exultant soul realizations, and if he 
would be fully equipped for combat in life's arenas 
and better prepared for heaven's divine rewards, 
let him go to Santa Catalina and rest awhile. 

The sublime culmination of all creation, of all 



GOSPEL OF REST AND HEALTH 231 

God's marvelous manifestations of his power and 
wisdom and goodness, is the salvation and eleva- 
tion of men. The Hon. Mr. Conger, our minister 
to China, said that the only one who completely 
broke down with despair during the siege of 
Peking was the French minister, an avowed 
atheist. Minister Conger commended the brav- 
ery of the Chinese converts and the courage and 
skill of the missionaries. 

In taking a rest people should get out of doors. 
There is truth in the statement, ''Man made the 
cities, but God made the country." John Bur- 
roughs puts it well when he says: 'Tn nature, in 
God, we hve and move and have our being. Our 
life depends on the purity and closeness of the 
connection. We want and must have nature at 
first hand — ^water from the spring, milk from the 
udder, air from the open." 

The fields, the mountains, and the seaside invite 
us. Veda says, ''The sea drinketh up all the evils 
of the world." Poe's favorite French poet, Bau- 
delaire, said, "I see only the Infinite through every 
open window." When some unfriendly critics 
chided Lord Byron because of his indifference to 
sacred things he wrote the rhythmical reply. 

Some kindly casuists are pleased to say I have no devotion; 
My altars are the mountains and the ocean. 

Rest should bring relaxation. Dean Swift used 
to play horse with his servants. Cardinal Mazarin 
played at leapfrog. One of my old college profes- 



232 A MAN^S REACH 

sors could surpass all his pupils in jumping the 
fences. It is told of Dr. Samuel Clarke that he 
rested from his theological studies by leaping over 
the chairs in his room. Once when he saw a 
pedantic fellow approaching, Dr. Clarke said to 
the pupil who was sharing his amusement, ''Now 
we must stop, for a fool is coming." 

If anyone would get the most out of his rest he 
must, as did Frederick the Great's best general, 
take his religion with him, in order that he may be 
able to interpret nature and receive from the God 
of nature new revelations of his glory. Unless our 
rest periods reenf orce our faith and our fervor in the 
service of God, our invigorated minds and bodies 
only increase the facilities for selfish and avaricious 
and frivolous living. Our talents and faculties are 
God's gifts to us, that we may render worship to 
him and service to our fellows. Unless used in 
this way, they contribute to our weakness and 
defeat rather than to our strength and success. 
When Trajan was made emperor of Rome he 
presented a sword to his chief captain, who was 
the defender of the emperor's person, saying, 'Tor 
me if I should govern well, against me if I should 
become a tyrant." So God arms us with our 
faculties and talents ; if we honor them by faithful 
service they will help us to greater usefulness and 
achievement, but if we dishonor these noble gifts, 
defeat and death await us. 



XV 

THE BURNING BUSH 



233 



Nothing in nature is unbeautiful. — Tennyson. 

Nature with folded hands seemed there, 
Kneehng at her evening prayer. 

— Longfellow. 

But who can paint 
Like Nature? Can imagination boast 
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers? 
Or can it mix them with that matchless skill 
And lose them in each other, as appears 
In every bud that blows? 

— Thomson. 

Of what I call God 
And fools call nature. 

— Robert Browning. 



234 



CHAPTER XV 
THE BURNING BUSH 

No story is fuller of fascinating interest to 
young and old than that which recounts how the 
little son of Amram and Jochebed was saved 
from the murderous edict of Pharaoh. There was 
the ark of bulrushes; the king's daughter and her 
maids; the crying babe, and the tender-hearted 
princess, saying, "This is one of the Hebrews' 
children"; and the babe adopted into Pharaoh's 
household. God's law of compensation and 
equilibrium sent a Hebrew baby into the very 
home of the murderous king, with the baby's 
mother as a nurse. "And Moses was learned in all 
the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in 
words and in deeds. And when he was full forty 
years old it came into his heart to visit his breth- 
ren, the children of Israel. And, seeing one of 
them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged 
him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian. 
For he supposed his brethren would have under- 
stood how that God by his hand would deliver 
them; but they understood not" — just like John 
Brown and his stand for the Negro at Harper's 
Ferry, "but they understood not." 

Moses fled into the land of Midian and hired 
himself as a shepherd to Jethro, the priest of 

235 



236 A MAN'S REACH 

Midian, who had seven daughters. And Moses 
married beautiful Zipporah, the daughter of 
Jethro. And he was seemingly buried forever in 
the lonely mountains as a herdsman. This bril- 
liant young man longed to be a deliverer of his 
people. He was ready and anxious to do some- 
thing, but there was no opportunity. ''God moves 
in a mysterious way.'' Let a man get ready and 
God will use him. God is very economical of his 
best material. You remember General Grant 
seemed buried in the obscurity of a Galena 
grocery store. 

One day, in the quiet haunts of Midian, not far 
from Mount Horeb, ''the mount of God," Moses 
was patiently watching the flocks of Jethro, his 
father-in-law. Doubtless he was meditating and 
praying, and longing for deliverance for his cap- 
tive people. For well-nigh forty years he had 
dwelt here in this mountainous shelter — strong in 
body and stronger in faith. In the regal palace of 
Pharaoh he had been for forty years trained in 
learning. Now, for forty years in the holy atmos- 
phere of the priest of Midian, his soul nature had 
steadily unfolded toward God. It sometimes takes 
a long time to get a man ready. Suddenly there 
was a marvelous sight! God arrests attention by 
mystery and miracle. There was a burning bush, 
and a voice said, "Moses, Moses," and Moses re- 
plied, "Here am I." 

Much is said in these days about nature and the 
supernatural. Man in his egotism and helpless- 



THE BURNING BUSH 237 

ness is accustomed to calling all things super- 
natural which he cannot understand. But all 
things are of God, whether we understand or do 
not. Nature is the living garment of God. "The 
course of nature is the art of God." 

All are parts of one stupendous whole 
Whose body nature is and God the soul. 

If anybody would understand God, he must get 
out of doors. "Of what I call God, and fools call 
nature.' ' 

One impulse from a vernal wood 

May teach you more of man, 
Of moral evil and of good, 

Than all the sages can. 

A voice is in the wind I do not know, 
A meaning on the face of the high hills 
Whose utterance I cannot comprehend, 
A something is behind them — that is God. 

Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind. 

How much more should trained men see and 

hear God! Lowell, in the "Vision of Sir Launfal,'' 

sings : 

And what is so rare as a day in June? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days; 
Then heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays; 
Whether we look, or whether we Hsten, 
We hear life murmur, or see it ghsten; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And groping bhndly about it for Ught, 

Chmbs to a soul in grass and flowers. 



238 A MAN^S REACH 

Verily the poet is a high priest of nature and the 
supernatural — to him the earth is vocal with 
heavenly voices, and filled with celestial music. 

To him who in love of nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms 
She speaks a various language. 

Yes, God speaks, but only the righteous can 
understand. 

Earth's crammed with heaven, 

And every common bush afire with God, 

But only he who sees takes off his shoes. 

And only the obedient and God-fearing can see. 

The mission of nature, with its marvelous sur- 
prises and beauties, is to lead men up to God. 
The people in the plains of Shinar long ago strove 
to build a mighty tower, from whose summit they 
imagined they might step into the royal chambers 
of the Almighty, but in confusion they failed. 
Those, however, who seek God by the granite 
staircases and snowy battlements of his lofty 
works will triumphantly succeed. As Alexander 
Pope so well says it, there is no private road, ''but 
man looks through nature up to nature's God." 
It is the Bard of Avon who sings. 

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, 

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks; 

Sermons in stones, and good in everything. 

In quest of ''sermons in stones and good in every- 
thing,'' I made my way to the wonders of the 
Colorado River in Arizona. Here is a monstrous 
chasm, called the Titan of Canyons, two hundred 



THE BURNING BUSH 239 

miles long and a dozen miles in width, having 
been worn to a depth of six thousand feet by the 
tumultuous Colorado River. One Sunday morn- 
ing in July I awakened in my room in the hotel 
and, looking out of my window, not two hundred 
feet from the rim of the Canyon, found the mighty 
chasm filled with a flood of purple light. In the 
western horizon there were delicate tints of white, 
blue, and red. In a few moments the edge of the 
sun appeared above the eastern horizon, and the 
yellow limestone rock which forms the upper 
stratum caught the first rays and glistened like a 
golden crown. In a similar manner the mountain 
peaks rising from the midst of the chasm were 
coronated with royal diadems. The purple flood 
dissolved into changing hues and sank into the 
depths and disappeared. Nearly all of one restful 
Sunday I sat upon the edge of this mighty chasm 
and worshiped the God who made it. All day 
long the colors and shadows changed with every 
hour. At sunset the red sandstone was warmed 
into a richer glow, and the faces of the limestone 
precipices seemed hke silken draperies with a 
sheen of changing tints. The lengthening twi- 
light afforded opportunity for the moon to roll 
its chariot of mellow light into the scene; and its 
silvery beams crept timidly into the thickening 
shadows below, coquetting with the specters of the 
deep granite grottoes. Meanwhile the mighty 
river, apparently unconscious of its fame as the 
earth's most masterful sculptor, rushed in tu- 



240 A MAN'S REACH 

multuous torrents toward the sea, contributing 
rich baritones to the vesper hymn of the chasm. 
Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals hft their 
swelhng domes and lofty spires and widen in 
octagonal symmetry into many quiet cloisters 
and chapels. Here also are pyramids of grace 
and terraces of beauty. Everywhere are shrines 
and altars. In the sides of the tall precipitous 
rocks is here and there a well-formed baldachino 
with pulpit and chancel. Resting on the rim of 
the canyon is a colossal dome of turquoise — a 
delicate and cloudless sky. 

I also went to the Yosemite Valley. To me the 
Yosemite Valley also was a majestic cathedral of 
colossal proportions. I suppose to the painter, 
with the porcelain skies and green meadows, pris- 
matic waterfalls and lofty crags, crowned with 
golden sunsets, the Yosemite is an exhaustless ar- 
tistic study. To the musician the splashing of the 
waters, the murmuring of the pines, and the 
soughing of the winds fill the valley with orches- 
tral and ^olian harps. To the sculptor and 
builder these precipitous walls and beetling cliffs, 
these weird profiles and eternal foundations, rival 
the carving and architectural magnificence of 
man's genius. But to me, all of these marvels 
shaped themselves into a minster grand. Here are 
domes and minarets, aisles and nave, transepts 
and twin spires, royal arches and polished col- 
umns. The sides of El Capitan were to me like 
rich tapestries embroidered with artistic designs 



THE BURNING BUSH 241 

of bewitching beauty. The waterfalls, with their 
rainbow splendors, were the altar-pieces; the slop- 
ing meadows the sacred chancel; the cataracts and 
zephyrs the birds and the echoes, and now and 
again the deep diapasons of the rumbling winds 
were the great organ accompaniment to the dox- 
ologies and hallelujahs which arose in tumultuous 
anthems from grateful hearts; and over all the 
blue vault of heaven, whose bending dome was 
resting upon lofty mountain peaks. 

If there is any place in all the outside world 
where the devout worshiper may feel the majestic 
God come down to earth, it is as he falls down 
to pray at the shrines of El Capitan or Half- 
Dome. Not only, as perhaps never before, is the 
visitor impressed with the majesty and grandeur 
of his Creator, but with humble gratitude he re- 
members that this mighty God is also his Father 
and Saviour. The God who hollows out the val- 
leys, and chisels the mountains, and sustains the 
heavens, who upholds all things by the word of 
his power, this God is our God, forever and ever. 

Whether in the canyon, or in the Yosemite, it is 
all a vast temple, a minster grand for the worship 
of the Most High God, and all the voices are 
chanting an anthem in whose familiar lines we 
gladly join, '^ Great and marvelous are thy 
works, Lord God Almighty." As Daniel Vedder 
says: 

Talk not of temples; there is one 
, Built without hands to mankind given; 



242 A MAN'S REACH 

Its lamps are the meridian sun 

And all the stars of heaven; 
Its walls are the cerulean sky, 

Its floor the earth so green and fair; 
The dome its vast immensity; 

All nature worships there. 

The manifold works of nature indicate the 
profound wisdom of our God. The late celebrated 
scientist, Joseph Le Conte, of the University of 
California, used to rebuke the materialistic ten- 
dency of men to eliminate the necessity of a Creator 
so soon as science revealed the methods of crea- 
tion. He said, ^'So long as we knew not how 
worlds were made, we, of course, concluded they 
must have been created; but so soon as science 
showed how probably it was done, immediately 
we flippantly say it was not made at all — ^it be- 
came so of itself.'' He was a wise old man. Re- 
member, as Job declares, ''God hangeth the earth 
upon nothing. ' ' Self-sufficiency does not come with 
complexity. The steam engine just as certainly 
needs a superintending genius as the wheelbarrow; 
in truth, the higher the grade of mechanism the 
larger amount of care is necessary. 

''The fool hath said in his heart. There is no 
God." Man is the only fool in the universe. 
"Knowledge is knowing we cannot know." The 
really cultured man grows more humble and less 
egotistical. The bombastic unbeliever blowing his 
blatant blasphemies is the most pitiable caricature 
in the world. A bantam rooster strutting about 
the barnyard in the bright morning, crowing out. 



THE BURNING BUSH 243 

''There is no sun," is a good crest for this swagger- 
ing egotist. 

Go, wondi'ous creature, mount where science guides, 

Go measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides, 

Instruct the planets in what course to run, 

Correct old time and regulate the sun; 

Go with Plato to the empyreal sphere. 

To the first good, first perfect, and first fair; 

Or tread the mazy round his followers trode, 

And quitting sense, call imitating God. 

Go teach eternal wisdom how to rule. 

Then drop into thyself and be a fool ! 

To Tyndall the great Tennyson said: ''No evo- 
lutionist is able to explain the mind of man, or how 
any possible physiological change of tissue can pro- 
duce conscious thought." Nor can anyone explain 
the marvelous mystery of human speech. An old 
German in Pennsylvania met an infidel who was to 
speak in the schoolhouse in the evening. "Is you 
der man vot is to schpeak dis evening?" "Yes, 
sir, I am." "Veil, vot you schpeak about?" "My 
subject, sir, is this: 'Resolved, That I will never 
believe anything I do not understand.' " "O my! 
Is dot it? Veil, now, you shoost take von little 
example: There you see that field, my pasture, 
over there? Now, my horse he eat de grass, and 
it come up hair all over his back. Then my sheep 
he eats grass, and it grows up wool all over him. 
And, now, vot you tink! My goose he eats de 
grass too, and it comes up all over him feathers. 
You understand dot? Heigh?" A belief in the 
supernatural is inborn. We are coming to the 



244 A MAN'S REACH 

farther edge of a zone of materialism through 
which we have been passing now for a dozen 
years. 

Scientific men, hke the late William James, are 
writing to-day about the new birth, immortality, 
and design in history. The pendulum swings away 
from crass materialism. What was declared to be 
only thunder is found to be the voice of God. 
Recently Dr. William Hanna Thomson, of the 
Roosevelt Hospital, New York city, the most 
distinguished living medical psychologist, declared 
that there is at least '^one supernatural fact that is 
satisfactorily established" — that is man. Man has 
a mechanism from necessity, but his real self is 
something above the mechanism. The bee has 
instinct, but man's power is above instinct, and 
improves: man ^^ creates mechanism" — masters na- 
ture. Niagara Falls runs all western New York. 
Man utilizes it. Man is God's strongest argu- 
ment. Only man can see. Man can see because 
he has Godlike qualities to see and understand. 

The most interesting discovery for a long time 
has just been made at Pompeii. Workmen who 
were digging for the foundation of a new building 
outside the area of the buried city found the body 
of a woman which had been petrified. Both hands 
were full of jewels. Evidently, the woman had 
fled from the eruption that overwhelmed Pompeii, 
carrying her valuables, and was buried in the 
downpour. The jewels are excellently preserved, 
they having been protected from the ashes and 



THE BURNING BUSH 245 

lava by the body. They consist of bracelets, neck- 
laces, rings, amulets studded with gems, and a 
pair of earrings. They may be the most valuable 
specimens of ancient jewelry ever discovered. It 
is not hard to believe that the disembodied spirit 
will last longer than the petrified body and these 
exquisite jewels. Man instinctively believes it. 
He sees and takes off his shoes. 

The place on which we stand, if we are in 
the path of duty, is holy ground. God calls 
men in most unexpected places: Franklin from 
printing office; Elihu Burritt from blacksmith 
shop: David from shepherd's field; Gideon from 
threshing floor; and Shamgar with his ox-goad. 
The path of duty is a trail alongside of Jehovah's 
royal highway. God passes near every man who 
is doing his duty. God never used a man who 
despises duty. "Duty" is the noblest, most 
stalwart word in the language. The irksome task 
of to-day may bring the crown to-morrow. No 
work is belittling if God sets us to it. 

To be able to do many little things well is the 
test of greatness. God is working out the re- 
generation of the race by human instrumentality. 
Moses could not see the providence of that Midian 
mountain experience of forty years, but God 
directed. John Brown's body mouldering in the 
grave did more to advance the cause of freedom 
than could the erratic actions of the living John 
Brown. .Let each man fearlessly dedicate his 
honest convictions to God, and fight for them. 



246 A MAN'S REACH 

God must have great men to make small be- 
ginnings. God builds men great by training them 
in doing small things well. If a man will be one 
of God's apprentices, God will make him a master- 
workman. 

God is a worker; he cannot tolerate the idle 
man. 

Alexander, when asked how he conquered the 
world, answered, ^'By not delaying.'' William 
Cowper said. 

An idler is a watch that wants both hands, 
As useless if it goes and if it stands. 

And Carlyle: ^ 'There is one monster in all the 
world — the idle man." At Saint Helena Napoleon 
said: '^Ah, old Blucher was worth a fine candle; 
without him I don't know where his Grace the 
Duke would be now; but, at all events, I would 
not be here." But ''old Blucher" was there — he 
was God's man — and Waterloo won. Napoleon 
was not in the path of duty — was not God's man 
— and Waterloo was lost. 

Rugged strength and radiant beauty, 

They were one in nature's plan, 
Humble toil and heavenward duty, 

These will form the perfect man. 

Ours may be a place of adversity, of arrest of 
plans, of mystery, apparently of self-effacement, 
but we are not merely "marking time" if we have 
left ourselves in His hands. 

"Do you remember the story of the portrait of 



THE BURNING BUSH 247 

Dante which is painted on the walls of the Bar- 
gello at Florence?" asks Dr. Henry van Dyke. 
For many years it was supposed that the picture 
had utterly perished. Men had heard of it, but 
no one living had ever seen it. But presently 
came an artist who was determined to find it 
again. He went into the place where tradition 
said that it had been painted. The room was used 
as a storeroom for lumber and straw. The walls 
were covered with dirty whitewash. He had the 
heaps of rubbish carried away, and patiently and 
carefully removed the whitewash from the wall. 
Lines and colors long hidden began to appear, and 
at last the grave, lofty, noble face of the great 
poet looked out again upon the world of light. 

Nothing is lost! The drop of rain 
Which falls in silence to the ground 
Abideth still; its life is found 

Transfigured in the golden grain. 

Nothing is lost! The falling tear, 
The word of comfort, lightly given, 
Shall still abide in yonder heaven, 

When earth's rich fruitage shall appear. 

To those who unfalteringly trust God a pit is a 
prophecy of a pinnacle. Adversity will develop 
divinity. 

It is told that a distinguished musician ordered a 
manufacturer of violins to make for him the best 
instrument possible. He told him to use the best 
material, take all the time wished, and use all his 
skill in its construction. At last the artificer sent 



248 A MAN'S REACH 

for the musician to come and try the vioHn. As 
the musician drew the bow across the instrument 
his face became clouded. Lifting the instrument, 
he smashed it to pieces on the counter, handed the 
price to the manufacturer, and left the shop. The 
manufacturer was not satisfied with mere pay, 
his reputation was at stake. He gathered the 
fragments of the violin and put them together. 
After he had remade the violin out of the pieces 
he again sent for the musician. This time the 
frown was not seen; as he drew the bow across the 
strings he told the manufacturer that he had 
succeeded at last in making just the kind of in- 
strument that he desired. ^^What is the price?" 
inquired the musician. '' Nothing at all,'' repHed 
the manufacturer. "It is the same instrument 
that you smashed to pieces some time ago; I put 
it together and out of the *fragments this perfect 
music has been made." 

I don't know why it is, but it would seem that 
our hearts must be broken before we can reach 
divinity. God is speaking to-day. , Have faith 
in God. 

Dr. John G. Paton was born on a farm near 
Dumfries, in Scotland, in 1824. While engaged 
in religious work in Glasgow the call to offer 
himself for service in the New Hebrides, among 
the cannibals, came to him. His people tried to 
dissuade him. One friend said: "The cannibals! 
You will be eaten by cannibals!" Paton replied: 
"Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years, and 



THE BURNING BUSH 249 

your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, 
where you will be eaten by worms. I had as soon 
be eaten by cannibals as by worms." 

When Bishop William Taylor left California to 
go around the world a timid man said, ^^Good-by, 
Brother Taylor; I never expect to see you again." 
''That depends upon whether you are here when I 
get back," said the stalwart man who trusted God. 
Moses obeyed and became the greatest human 
product of all the ages. Obedience is achievement. 
Achievement is character. Character is immor- 
tality. 

"And he buried him in a valley in the land of 
Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no man know- 
eth of his sepulcher unto this day." 

By Nebo's lonely mountain, 

On this side of Jordan's wave, 
In a vale in the land of Moab, 

There Hes a lonely grave; 
But no man built that sepulcher, 

And no man saw it e'er; 
For the angels of God upturned the sod. 

And laid the dead man there. 



XVI 
GETTING ALONG WITH FOLKS 



251 



He helde about him alway, out of drede 
A world of folke. 

— Canterbury Tales. 

Our ancestors are very good kind of folks, but they are the 
last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance 
with. — R. B. Sheridan. 

"A strong nor-wester's blowing, Bill! 

Hark! don't you hear it roar now? 
Lord, help 'em, how I pities them 
Unhappy folks on shore now!" 

— William Pitt, 



252 



CHAPTER XVI 
GETTING ALONG WITH FOLKS 

God must be very fond of folks, for he made so 
many of them. God has made towering moun- 
tains and spreading plains, fertile valleys and 
fruitful hillsides, radiant skies and billowy seas, 
but the most beautiful and entrancing things he 
has created are folks. You can trace the foot- 
prints of Jehovah among the rocks; you can hear 
his voice in the rolUng thunder and in the call of 
the cricket; you can discern his power in the elec- 
tric current and in the cataract as it blows its 
trumpets from the steep, but God has nowhere 
invested so much of himself as in folks. God has 
made provision for the cony and the crocodile, 
for the sparrow and for the bald eagle; he has 
piled up the snow mountains and crowned them 
with silver; he has imfurled the skies and set 
them with jewels, and he has fixed the habitations 
of the seas. He has located the suns and their 
satellites, and commanded the seasons and the 
equinoxes; but in nothing is he so tenderly con- 
cerned with loving, Fatherly care as in folks. 

How to get along with folks is our theme. It 
is the same as asking, ^^How can we get along 
with the world?" for our true world is a world of 
folks. It is the same as discussing how to make 

253 



254 A MAN'S REACH 

a life, for if we cannot get on with folks, we are 
out of sympathy with existence. 

Paul says, ''As much as heth in you, live peace- 
ably with all men." That is, if it is not possible, 
let the reason lie with the other person and not 
with ourselves. This places the great responsi- 
bihty of getting along with folks upon ourselves, 
and yet contains the comforting intimation that 
there are some angular creatures with whom it may 
be utterly impossible to live peaceably. These 
exceptions, however, only prove the rule that it 
is possible to live peaceably with all mankind. 
Many a man makes utter failure of life because 
he has not learned that a successful and fruitful 
life depends largely upon the skill which he de- 
velops of getting along with people. "Love thy 
neighbor as thyself' lies at the very foundation 
of helpful economic conditions and of superb 
personal character. 

If a man would get along with folks, he must 
first learn how to get along with his God. No 
man will fervently say ''My brother" until he has 
first tenderly said "My Father." There is so 
much selfishness and greed in the unregenerated 
human heart that all of this must be eliminated 
by a miracle of divine grace before we will have 
room in our hearts for the purest devotion to our 
fellows. If a man has not made room for God 
in his heart, his fellow men will find themselves 
in a tight place in such a heart. When a man 
strives to love God with all his soul and mind and 



GETTING ALONG WITH FOLKS 255 

strength he will build up in himself the Christian 
disposition, which is described as follows: ''But 
the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then 
peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of 
mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and 
without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness 
is sown in peace of them that make peace. '^ 

If a man would get along with folks, he must 
learn also to get along with himself. A right view 
of ourselves helps us to be more considerate of 
other people. We have no right to expect more of 
others than we are demanding of ourselves. 

O wad some power the gif tie gie us 
To see oursel's as others see us! 
It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 
And foolish notion. 

The trouble with the world's misanthropes is 
that they are not getting along with themselves; 
they have not mastered themselves. The man 
who cannot master his appetites and his emotions 
and his selfish inclinations, his peevishness and 
irascibility ought to be very charitable to others. 
The most egotistical man I know is always criti- 
cizing other people for their conceit. A man who 
drinks and profanes and desecrates the holy ideals 
is not getting along with himself — and he is sure 
to antagonize folks. He will not be able to get 
along with law-abiding and order-loving people. 
The beginning of all law and order is in our own 
heart. The complexion and tone of the world 
outside will depend on the tone and color of a 



256 A MAN^S REACH 

man inside. If a man wears yellow glasses, all 
men will have sallow faces to him; Royal Wor- 
cester will look like Yellow-Ware. Men bore 
such a man because they are talking when he 
wants to be talking himself. If a man has not 
bridled his own tongue, he will soon set every- 
body talking about him. Men often rush into 
dissipation and frivolity just to get away from 
themselves. God pity the man who does not 
enjoy a few hours with himself. A man who 
loses his own self-respect cannot expect others to 
respect him; and he will become bitter and com- 
plaining, and not be able to get along with folks. 
If a man would have a just estimate of folks, he 
must first be able to take a true inventory of him- 
self. He should stand on the street corner some 
day and watch himself go by. 

If we would get along with folks, we must cul- 
tivate the fine grace of tact. Tact is the fine art of 
living. It is applied Christianity. Tact is an in- 
valuable asset in spreading Christianity. Paul 
was an expert in this Christian grace. He said, 
"I am made all things to all men, that I might by 
all means save some.'^ You will observe he did 
not mean that he would sacrifice any high prin- 
ciple, for that would make it impossible for him 
to save anybody; but he meant that he would 
find some means of approach to every man, some 
common ground of mutual interest and agreement. 
He would study each man's individuality or idio- 
syncrasy, in order that he might be able to in- 



GETTING ALONG WITH FOLKS 257 

fluence him. Christian tact is the fine skill of 
influencing people for good without antagonizing 
them. We cannot persuade men unless we can 
agree on some important things. Tact is finding 
out the psychological moment for speaking to 
people. The right thing said at the wrong time 
has defeated many an honest intention. Tact is 
the fine sense of avoiding giving offense and at 
the same time gaining some exalted purpose. 

Obsequious flattery is not tact. The unctuous, 
oily compliment is not tact. Some people are 
always saying complimentary things and making 
their friends feel comfortable; and that is to be 
commended; but tact studies diplomacy, that we 
may ^^by all means save some.'' 

Tact clinches the bargain, 

Sails out of the bay, 
Gets the vote in the Senate 

Spite of Webster or Clay. 

Is it possible for us to avoid making enemies? 
Jesus Christ himself said, "Woe unto you when 
all men shall speak well of you." There are evi- 
dently two kinds of enemies which men may make. 
Some enemies are the result of ill and undeserved 
treatment. Neglect, gossip, dishonesty will make 
men enemies. It is certainly possible to avoid 
abusing men and thus making them our enemies, 
and that man deserves to be put in a pillory who 
savagely assails the character or integrity of his 
fellow men. Sometimes this is done by cowardly 
innuendo and sometimes in open combat. But 



258 A MAN^S REACH 

there are people who become our enemies because 
we are endeavoring to do right and are vahantly 
defending our convictions. A good supply of tact 
will reduce the number of these enemies, but if we 
assail wrongdoing and earnestly endeavor to en- 
throne the right we will be bitterly criticized, 
and perhaps maligned. 

Jesus made many cruel enemies. He came to 
establish a new order and to tear down the wicked 
systems of designing men. Some people are so 
unreasonable that they will be our enemies in 
spite of everything which we may do. If our atti- 
tude as Christian workers is such that liquor 
dealers, libertines, atheists, spiritualists, tainted 
theaters, greedy grafters. Sabbath desecrators, 
white-slavers, gamblers, child-slavers, tipplers, 
drunkards, harlots, murderers, saloon keepers, 
brewers, whisky-grocers, liars, and hypocrites all 
speak well of us, the Lord have mercy upon us! 
Christ has spoken a "Woe" against us if oiu* labor 
for him is so selfish, spineless, and invertebrate, so 
emasculated and aimless that no one is aroused 
into antagonism. 

John Wesley asked of his preachers: "Has any- 
body been converted?" "No." "Has anybody 
been convicted of sin?" "No." "Did you make 
anybody mad?" "No." "Well, then," he would 
say to them, "you need not go out to preach again." 
Savonarola had his Borgia, John Knox his Bloody 
Mary, and Abraham Lincoln his Wilkes Booth. 
"The man who makes a character makes foes"; 



GETTING ALONG WITH FOLKS 259 

he will have what Rossetti calls '^my most intimate 
enemies." If we have made people our enemies 
because of our ill treatment of them, it is the mark 
of highest courtesy and Christianity for us to 
make every apology and reparation in our power, 
and seek for reconciliation. If people are our will- 
ful enemies because they despise and denounce our 
high ideals of honor and truth, then we should 
patiently follow our Lord's Bible injunction, ^'Love 
yom" enemies, bless them that curse you, do good 
to them that hate you, and pray for them which 
despitefully use you and persecute you.'' Kind- 
ness will transform many a deadly enemy into a 
goodly friend. ''He makes no friend who never 
made a foe" was one of Tennyson's finest lines. 
He often inscribed it in albums when asked for his 
autograph. 

If we would get along with folks, we must 
highly value our friends. A man who ruthlessly 
neglects and slights his friends will not be able to 
make new friends. There are many reasons why 
people lose their friends. A man is just as many 
times more a man as he can number his faithful 
friends. 

Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried 
Bind them to thyself with hoops of steel. 

A man without friends becomes acrid, fault- 
finding, hypercritical, caustic, discordant, lop- 
sided, out-of-joint, pessimistic, and, of course, 
cannot get along with folks. 



260 A MAN'S REACH 

The pessimist cannot get along with folks. He is 
always looking for imperfections and camping in 
the damp shadows. Everything is going to the bad, 
and men and things are getting worse and worse. 

Let us give our fellows praise instead of blame; 
taffy instead of epitaphy; compliments instead of 
criticism; honey instead of tar. '^All the world 
loves a lover." And the world will love a man 
who loves mankind. The man who loves the 
people will be ardently loved by the people. 

Note the contrast between Abraham Lincoln 
and Napoleon: Napoleon used to say, '^Success is 
everything; men are nothing." He declared, ''If 
you would have an omelette, you must break a 
few eggs." And so he did not hesitate to sacrifice 
men in any number to fulfill his inordinate ambi- 
tion. Napoleon changed the beautiful motto of 
France, ''Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," into "In- 
fantry, Cavalry, Artillery." Lincoln invested a 
new meaning in the hallowed word "freedom." 
Napoleon improvidently and cruelly expended life. 
Lincoln carefully labored to save life. Napoleon 
saved his own life, and thereby lost it. Lincoln 
freely surrendered his life, and thereby saved it. 
In modern history there is no chapter more cruel 
and tragic than that which recounts how Napoleon 
put away his beautiful and faithful wife, Josephine, 
and married Marie Louise of Austria. For sordid, 
selfish, and political reasons he divorced Josephine, 
whom he loved, and took Marie Louise, who in 
the hour of his humiliation deserted him. The 



GETTING ALONG WITH FOLKS 261 

law of history could not endure actions so barbaric 
and inhuman, and Napoleon's imperial destiny 
ended in humiliating defeat and withering exile. 
The world would not tolerate so ignoble a brute, 
and, incarcerated like a vicious Bengal tiger, he 
was caged in the stone prison of Saint Helena. 

With all this savage inhumanity contrast the 
sublime, folk-loving, self-sacrificing spirit of the 
immortal Lincoln. Like his Lord, he was touched 
with a feeling of the world's infirmities. He 
sought to soothe the sorrows of men and helped 
them to carry their burdens. He plodded through 
twenty-five years of poverty to a vantage spot 
where in his voice and spirit a struggling hu- 
manity found a seer and saviour. He fervently 
loved the people, and by them was fervently 
loved in return. A grateful people have enshrined 
Abraham Lincoln in an immortality which will 
wax brighter and more enduring with the flight 
of years. Character is the fine art of giving up. 

If any man will love the people and unselfishly 
minister to their highest ideals and their most 
sacred necessities, he will have no trouble getting 
along with folks. 

Let me live in my house by the side of the road, 

Where the race of men go by; 
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, 

Wise, foohsh — so am I. 
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat. 

Or hurl the cynic's ban? 
Let me hve in my house by the side of the road, 

And be a friend to man. 



XVII 
^MASTER, SAY ON'' 



263 



One truth discovered is immortal and entitles its author to 
be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be 
destroyed . — Hazlitt . 

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again — 

The eternal years of God are hers; 
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain. 

And dies among his worshipers. 

— William Cullen Bryant. 

Jesus will never be outgrown. — Napoleon. 

Jesus the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. — Paul. 



264 



CHAPTER XVII 
^^MASTER, SAY ON'' 

Aristophanes, the Greek poet, in one of his fan- 
cies makes an Athenian to say that upon returning 
to his home, ^'My daughter shall grasp me, anoint 
my two feet, and, stooping down, kiss them.'' It 
was a gracious courtesy among the ancient Orien- 
tals always extended to guests that the sandals 
should be removed after a long journey and that 
their feet should be bathed for refreshment. This 
was usually done by the servants. 

Twice during Christ's ministry women came 
with alabaster boxes of ointment and washed the 
tired feet of our Lord, the last time as he was the 
honored guest in Simon's luxurious home in Beth- 
any during the week of his passion, when the sister 
of Lazarus performed this exquisite service, and 
again in the early part of his ministry, when he 
was being feasted in the home of a Pharisee, 
whose name also was Simon. On this occasion a 
repentant woman, who is sometimes identified as 
Mary Magdalene, came with sweet perfume, and, 
having washed the feet of our Lord with her 
tears of gratitude for his merciful pardon to her, 
she wiped them with her luxuriant hair, and then 
anointed his feet with the fragrant spikenard. 

The host, with his unyielding Pharisaism, 

265 



£66 A MAN'S REACH 

promptly criticized his honored guest for allowing 
a woman who was a sinner to touch him, for, ac- 
cording to the ideals of this stiff ecclesiast, she 
would be ritually unclean. Jesus seized upon this 
picturesque incident and the harsh attitude of 
his genial but critical host to impart an important 
lesson; and, addressing him, said, '^ Simon, I have 
somewhat to say unto thee.'' And Simon politely 
replied, ^'Master, say on.'' Then Jesus, with 
tender rebuke, laid before this straitlaced son of 
Judaism in brief the whole philosophy of salva- 
tion. The application of the parable came to this 
intelligent Pharisee with gentle but tremendous 
force. If a certain creditor had two debtors, and 
one debtor owed him five hundred pence and 
another fifty, and he ''frankly forgave" them both, 
which of these men will love his kind creditor the 
more? With good judgment, Simon answered that 
the larger debtor would be the more grateful. 
Now, Jesus, with delicate discrimination, not tres- 
passing upon the proprieties of his position as a 
guest, makes a comparison between his host and 
the woman, who as an expression of thanksgiving 
for what her Lord had done for her in the pardon of 
her multitudinous sins, had poured the rich oint- 
ment on his feet. Turning to the woman as she 
continued to kneel at his feet, still holding the 
empty alabaster box in her hand, and wounded 
by the stern words of an unsympathetic critic, 
and yet gazing upon Jesus with tearful gratitude 
out of the wonder of her dark, lustrous eyes. 



"MASTER, SAY ON'^ 267 

Jesus said to Simon: ''Seest thou this woman? I 
entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water 
for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with 
tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. 
Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since 
the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my 
feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint; 
but this woman hath anointed my feet with oint- 
ment. Wherefore, I say unto thee, Her sins, 
which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: 
but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth 
little. And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. 
And they that sat at meat with him began to say 
within themselves. Who is this that forgiveth sins 
also? And he said to the woman. Thy faith hath 
saved thee; go in peace.'' As the happy Magda- 
lene withdrew, the soul of sensitive Simon was 
filled with wonder, and perhaps also with true 
repentance. O Master, reveal to us some of the 
splendors of thy truth and the divine glory of thy 
heart of love! "Master, say on!" 

At one time the chief priests and Pharisees ar- 
ranged with the authorities to send officers to arrest 
Jesus for his alleged seditious utterances. Like de- 
tectives, armed with the authority of the law, these 
officers went about their task. They came upon 
Jesus on that last great day of the feast, when 
he stood up among the crowds that were thronging 
Jerusalem for the passover celebration, and, with 
a voice clear as the bells of heaven, and with a 
face which was radiant with holy light, and with 



268 A MAN'S REACH 

a magnetism which drew men and women and 
children to his heart of love, he called out, '^If any 
man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." 
The dutiful officers listened to these mystic words; 
they beheld his glowing personality, and, ac- 
quainted with the criminal class as they very well 
were, they could find no reason for laying hands 
upon him. When they saw the children at his 
feet, and their mothers in the shelter of his pres- 
ence, and strong men charmed and tractable 
under the gentle but strong and manly words of 
this supposed malefactor, they returned to their 
superiors; and when they asked why they had not 
brought him, the officers replied, '^Never man 
spake like this man." thou matchless Master, 
thou who only hast the words of eternal life, ''say 
on"! 

Will the world ever outgrow Jesus? His ene- 
mies reluctantly confessed to each other on that 
first Palm Sunday, 'Terceive ye how ye prevail 
nothing? behold, the world is gone after him." 
Pilate, in pitiful weakness, cries at the trial, 
''What shall I do with Jesus which is called the 
Christ?" O vacillating and cowardly Pilate, it 
does not make any difference what you do with 
him! You may scourge him, deride him, spit 
upon him, drive cruel nails through his hands, 
and plunge a thirsty spear into his holy side, but 
you cannot crucify truth; you cannot annihilate 
Christ; you cannot obliterate the love of the 
human heart for him; for, three days hence, a 



^'MASTER, SAY ON'^ 269 

sealed tomb will burst its bars, and a risen Lord 
will come forth in garments of celestial light; and 
the multitude will again hurry to his wounded 
side and kiss his torn hands and anoint his scarred 
brow; and they will cry out once more, "Master, 
say on!'' 

Two generations ago a Christian boy went to 
hear Theodore Parker preach; and when the 
thundering philippics fell from the preacher's vin- 
dictive lips, and fearful blows were struck by his 
fierce fist mailed with destructive unbelief and 
criticism, the boy hurried to his home, and, bury- 
ing his face in his mother's apron, he sobbed, 
"Mother, Christianity is dead! It is dead!" His 
mother with tender words and brightening faith 
reassured her frightened child; and a generation 
later that boy was preaching the gospel of free 
salvation to teeming multitudes. O "Master, 
say on!" 

If there were no other active force to keep 
Jesus alive except his humble followers his ene- 
mies would not let the world forget him. Their 
bitter and malevolent assaults upon Jesus are 
turning the inquiring and sincere heart of hu- 
manity toward him. He is daily vindicated by 
his enemies. "Truly this man was the Son of 
God" was the testimony of the centurion who 
witnessed his death; and it is as true now as when 
recorded in Deuteronomy, "Their rock is not as 
our Rock, even our enemies themselves being 
judges." 



no A MAN'S REACH 

The world will not outgrow Jesus, because he 
came with a world-wide ministry. His ministry 
is not provincial or racial or national or insular. 
The seas are his highways, the islands his stepping- 
stones, the continents his conquests, and the whole 
world his parish. No single throne is mighty 
enough for his power, and no language a sufficient 
conveyance for his truth. His Pentecostal mes- 
sage is in all tongues and his holy shrines are 
under all skies. 

Truth will never be outgrown. Christ is truth. 
Truth is vital, eternal, pervasive. So is Christ. 
^'We cannot do anything against the truth, but 
for the truth." All things work together for 
truth — it cannot be worn out or overthrown or 
antiquated. The frontiers of truth steadily press 
forward into the dark domain of error. Truth's 
pioneers are crossing the plains, and reaching the 
crest of the Rockies, and descending to the distant 
paradises of more truth. Christ as truth moved 
triumphantly onward from the banks of the Jor- 
dan to the Tiber; and later to the Bosporus and 
the Elbe; thence to the Thames and the Hudson; 
and on to the broad valley of the Mississippi 
and to the tumultuous Columbia; and, nothing 
daunted, it leaps the mightiest sea and establishes 
itself in permanent and transcendent glory on 
the banks of the Nile, the Congo, the Volga, the 
Yangtze, and the Ganges. 

Christ moves with the stride of peaceful con- 
quest. When the bloody Turks were plunging 



'^MASTER, SAY ON^^ ^n 

their thirsty swords into the heaving bosoms of 
the helpless Armenian women the dying sufferers 
would trustfully murmur, ''Jesus Christ!'^ And 
those murderous invaders retired from their fren- 
zied assaults asking, ''Who is Jesus Christ?'^ Yes, 
the world is asking, "Who is Jesus of Nazareth?" 
and the world will never tire of him; and some day 
every knee shall bow and every tongue will con- 
fess him. "Master, say on!'^ 

The world will not outgrow Jesus, because he 
completely fulfills in his life and truth all the 
loftiest ideals for which there is an intuitive 
reach in the unfolding human heart. The world 
does not tire of perfection. The poems of Homer, 
the wisdom of Plato, the demonstrations of Euchd, 
the torso of Hercules, the Venus of Milo, the 
Apollo of the Belvedere, the "Last Supper" of 
Leonardo, the "Transfiguration" of Raphael, the 
"Last Judgment" of Angelo will never tire the 
world's admiration. The beauty of a babe, the 
blush of the flower, the glow of the sunbeam, the 
note of the bird, the embroidery of the sea, the 
hues of the simset, the exquisite modesty of 
woman and the tender loveUness of her face will 
never be outgrown by a developing world, nor 
wearied of by advancing nations. So of Christ. 
Though impoverished, imprisoned, despised, and 
murdered, yet he was gentle, brave, forgiving, and 
patient; and in the throes of his agony prayed, 
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what 
they do." "Master, say on!" 



272 A MAN'S REACH 

Jesus Christ is not a symbol, or a metaphor, or a 
filmy ideal which is slowly fading out of the think- 
ing and faith of the world; he is a substantial 
personality, wielding an influence and power, a 
contemporary of each advancing age and a com- 
panion of each devout follower. He said, '^Lo, 
I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world." ''Master, say on!" 

The world will not outgrow him, because it will 
not outgrow childhood, and Jesus sanctified child- 
hood in Bethlehem's manger. The world will not 
outgrow him, because it will not outgrow man- 
hood, and Jesus ennobled manhood by his perfect 
manliness in Galilee and Judaea. The world will 
not outgrow him, because it will not outgrow 
womanhood, for every woman who makes the 
mysterious journey through the sublime miracle 
and exquisite ecstasy of motherhood solemnly and 
gratefully remembers that Jesus Christ, her Lord 
and Redeemer, was throbbed into being under a 
woman's heart. It was this same Jesus who said, 
''Let her alone," referring to a timid ministering 
woman; and "Suffer the little children to come 
unto me" to anxious mothers and their little 
ones. "Master, say on!" 

The world will never outgrow Jesus, because 
he lightens the burdens of men. He helps Lazarus 
with his sores, Nicodemus with his questions, 
Thomas with his doubts, and Peter with his 
fickleness. He assuages the grief, heals the 
wounds, and defeats the adversities of a struggHng 



^^MASTER, SAY ON^^ ^73 

humanity. He had compassion on the multitude, 
and said to his disciples, ''Give ye them to eat"; 
and to the weary toilers, retiu-ning from the 
heavy tasks of the day, he gave the sympathetic 
invitation, ''Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
"Master, say on!" 

He treated men as individuals and not as herds, 
and was as kindly to the peasant as to the prince. 
He dignified labor by working himself at the trade 
of a carpenter in Nazareth. He said to the man 
with the withered hand, "Stretch forth thine 
hand." He said, "Go work to-day in my vine- 
yard," for "the night cometh, when no man can 
work." Porcelain was first made by the Chinese 
and was given its name by the early Portuguese 
navigators. When they reached the Far East 
and saw the delicate semitransparent articles 
they called them porcellanaj which means "sea- 
shell." The Chinese god of porcelain is made of 
this material. Tradition tells of a certain work- 
man who once received an order from the em- 
peror to produce some porcelain vases of super- 
fine quaUty. After several unsatisfactory attempts 
the workman lost heart, and in tragic desperation 
he leaped into the furnace and was consumed. 
The vases which were taken out of the furnace in 
which the disappointed workman had immolated 
himself were found to surpass all other products 
of the kiln, and were sent to the emperor, who 
was so pleased with their surpassing beauty and 



274 A MAN^S REACH 

exquisite quality that he deified the man, who had 
sacrificed himself, as the ''god of porcelain." So 
Jesus taught his followers to throw themselves 
with happy abandon into their work, and to do 
with their might what their hands find to do. 
O Master, Fisherman in Galilee, and Carpenter 
in Nazareth, ''say on'M 

The world will not outgrow Jesus, because it 
will not outgrow sorrow and adversity, and Jesus 
was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with 
grief.'' As the dark night came on after the first 
day of the earthquake and fire in San Francisco 
a company of homeless people gathered around a 
piano which had been rescued from the debris, 
and sang with clinging and tearful confidence, 

"Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom, 
Lead thou me on! 
The night is dark, and I am far from home." 

Then, as their courage was revived, they joined 
in singing, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," and 

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me. 
Let me hide myself in Thee." 

And Jesus comes to an imperiled and buffeted 
world to-day just as he came to his disciples on 
raging Galilee, and says, "Peace, be still," and 
just as he broke the stillness and apprehension of 
the upper room with "Peace be unto you," and, 
yet again, as he ministered true consolation to his 
awe-stricken disciples as they saw portentous 
shadows of our Lord's passion, sajdng, "Let not 



^^MASTER, SAY ON^' 275 

your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe 
also in me." O Master of men, O Pilot of Galilee, 
^^sayon"! 

The world will not outgrow Jesus, because it will 
not outgrow life, and Jesus said, ^'I am come 
that they might have life, and that they might 
have it more abundantly.'' Christ is the miracle 
of love which solves the mystery of hfe. He says, 
^'Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and 
doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, 
which built his house upon a rock: and the rain 
descended, and the floods came, and the winds 
blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: 
for it was founded upon a rock." To build on 
the Rock is life. ^^Master, say on!" 

The world will not outgrow Christ, because 
until the final triumph it will not outgrow sin. 
'Thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall 
save his people from their sins." John the Bap- 
tist said, '^ Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh 
away the sin of the world." Jesus Christ is the 
sinner's Friend. He said to the repentant Mag- 
dalene, ''Go and sin no more." He said to the 
dying thief, "To-day thou shalt be with me in 
paradise." He forgave Thomas for his doubts, 
and Peter for his cowardice, and Zacchseus for his 
avarice; and said, "The Son of man is come to 
seek and to save that which was lost." He de- 
scended into the impenetrable gloom of Geth- 
semane and climbed the rough trails of Golgotha, 
and submitted to ignominy and death, that he might 



276 A MAN^S REACH 

be able to cry out in victorious triumph, *^It is 
finished/^ And as he passed up the gUstening 
highway of the blue skies he commissioned his 
bewildered disciples to go into all the world with 
the gospel of light, assuring them, ^'Lo, I am 
with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 
O risen and ascended and ruling ''Master, say 
on"! 

The world will not outgrow Jesus, because it 
will not outgrow death; and Jesus is the only 
solution of the fathomless problem of death. 
Jesus said, ''I am the resurrection, and the hfe: 
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and be- 
heveth in me shall never die." Since Jesus broke 
the bars of the grave on that first Easter morning 
death is not despair, but hope; not tragedy, but 
triumph; not a sob, but a song; not the end, but 
the beginning; not the twilight, but the dawn. 

Death is the graduation of the soul; it is the 
commencement of life; it is the gateway to glory; 
it is the Glistening Portal to fadeless immortality. 
'Thanks be unto God, which giveth us the victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ." Jesus came to 
^ 'bring life and immortality to light through the 
gospel." He says, "I go to prepare a place for 
you." "Because I live ye shall live also." "I will 
come again and receive you unto myself." 
"Master, say on!" 

The blind man validated Jesus. Whether the 
life, and sufferings, and power of Jesus shall be 



^^MASTER, SAY ON'^ 277 

validated to-day depends upon us — upon us who 
have been the recipients of his love and works. 
O validate Christianity! Confirm it! Reenforce 
it — by your character! 

The late Admiral Robley Evans, who com- 
manded the Iowa in the battle of Santiago, once 
attended divine service at old Trinity Church, 
New York, and was ushered into the pew of a 
wealthy man. The pew-holder, coming in later, 
and seeing a stranger, and not knowing him, took 
a card from his pocket and wrote on it: ^^I pay 
one thousand dollars a year for this pew." The 
Admiral read it, and, taking out one of his own 
visiting cards, wrote upon it, ^'You pay too much,'' 
and handed it to the inhospitable New Yorker. 
Yes, and it cost Trinity Church too much to 
tolerate that stingy old curmudgeon. 

It is well to have sermons in pulpits, and ser- 
mons in books, and sermons in stones, and sermons 
in pictures, and sermons in seas, skies, and flowers, 
but, as my dear old friend Dr. Cuyler used to 
say, it is ^ ^sermons in shoes" that a busy, jostUng 
world needs. 

A brilliant Japanese statesman once visited 
England to become acquainted with Mr. Glad- 
stone. He was wondrously charmed with the 
Grand Old Man's majestic personality; and when 
he inquired what was the motive force in Glad- 
stone's life, and he was told that it was his faith 
in Christ, he repHed, ^Then^ I will be a Christian 
too." 



278 A MAN'S REACH 

Will Jesus ever be outgrown? Yes! When the 
stars outshine the sun; when the rivers no longer 
to the ocean run; when the everlasting verities fail, 
and when the pillars of the universe crumble, and 
when the bounds of eternity are reached; when 
the hands move backward upon the clock's dial; 
when the spring does not follow the winter, nor 
the autumn the summer; when fruits will not 
ripen, and flowers will not bloom, and birds will 
not sing, and bees will not hum; when beauty will 
not brighten, or light dispel the gloom; when 
mothers hate their babies and all love is turned to 
stone; when there shall be a Creatorless creation 
and a causeless causation; then, and not until then, 
will the world outgrow Jesus, and the heart of 
humanity tire of Christ. No, so long as man is 
man and God is God and heaven is in the intuitive 
and universal longing of the soul of a lonesome 
and waiting humanity, the world will not tire of 
Jesus. 

^'Master, say on!" Evermore here and here- 
after, ^^say on!" ^'say on!" ''say on!" 



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